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MEA CULPA 









M E A 


CULPA 


A WOMAN’S LAST WORD 


BY 

HENRY HARLAND 

»' 

(SYDNEY LUSKA) 

AUTHOR OF 

“AS IT WAS WRITTEN,” ETC., ETC. 


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JUL 23 092 




NEW YORK 

JOHN W. LOVELL COMPANY 

150 Worth Street, corner Mission Place 


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Copyright, 1891, 

BY 

UNITED STATES BOOK COMPANY 


ME A CULPA: 

A WOMAN’S LAST WORD. 


PART I. 


FATHER AND DAUGHTER. 




®0 


TH. BENTZON: 


IF IN THE PAGES THAT FOLLOW I HAVE FAILED TO 
POINT A MORAL, MAY I AT LEAST MAKE 
SURE OF ADORNING A TALE BY 
BEGINNING MINE WITH 
YOUR BRILLIANT 
NAME ? 










4 













* 


























































































I. 


This narrative, which will be true in all its details, the 
most incidental as well as the most intimate and essential 
— true in letter as in spirit — reaches its catastrophe and 
conclusion here in London in the summer of the year 
1890. But it must begin in Paris in the month of March 
seven years before. 

We had lived in Paris, my father and I, since 1879. 
First, I will explain, very briefly, why we lived there ; 
secondly, I will describe the manner of our life there. 

My father, Paul Mikhaelovitch Banakin, had never as- 
sociated himself, directly or indirectly, with the revolu- 
tionary movement in Russia. He was, indeed, a man of 
liberal views ; a Radical, even, in the sense that, despising 
ready-made formulas and loving realities, he went to the 
root of every question that he pretended to touch ; a 
Republican, if you wish, in his political ideals ; and as 
for religion, though he was neither an atheist nor an ag- 
nostic, he had convictions of his own which prevented 
him from finding the least spiritual satisfaction in the 
ceremonial religion of the Russian Church. In so far, 
then, he was perhaps of the same stuff as the active mem- 
bers of the revolutionary party ; but in so far only. For 
of the aims, the methods, and the cardinal principles of 
the revolutionists he totally disapproved. “ The revo- 
lutionary programme,” I have often heard him say, “ has 
been conceived in folly, and must be executed, if at all, 
in crime. It is the production of brains that have been 
but half baked. It illustrates what a dangerous thing a 


10 


MEA CULPA. 


little learning is. It authors are men who have rapidly 
swallowed, without digesting, the most obvious and su- 
perficial deductions of modern scientific thought, but 
have never even caught the aroma of its more occult 
significance, its deeper tendencies, or its remoter corolla- 
ries. They would endeavor to force at once, by violence, 
changes which, in the nature of things, must come to pass 
slowly, by a process of growth. For me, I am too much 
of a philosopher, I have read my history too thoroughly, 
to share their theories ; and with their practice how can 
any civilized human being feel the slightest sympathy ? 
To Tsar-murder, terrorism, dynamite — in one word, to 
warfare by stealth — I pronounce myself an unrelenting 
foe.” 

Such, roughly, was my father’s attitude toward the 
revolutionary agitation in Russia. Yet in 1879 he had, 
at a moment’s notice, to fly from his country, like a thief 
in the night, and seek an asylum in France, lest he should 
be arrested and transported to Siberia as a political 
offender. 

Why? 

Because one evening, in the early spring of that year, 
we received a domiciliary visit from the police, at our 
apartment in St. Petersburg ; and (my father being an 
omnivorous reader) there, in plain evidence, upon the 
table and in the shelves of our library, lay certain books, 
pamphlets, and periodicals which it was forbidden for 
Russian subjects to have in their possession, as well as 
certain manuscripts in which my father had set down the 
results of his speculations in various branches of political 
science, theology, and metaphysics. All this compromis- 
ing literature, printed and written, the police seized ; but, 
since they did not at once deprive my father of his 
liberty, he, the most optimistic and hopeful of men, be- 
lieved that the matter would end there, and made light 


FATHER AND DAUGHTER. 


11 


of my anxiety lest something more serious might come 
of it. 

In this, however, as the event proved, he was mistaken. 

Suddenly, one day, a week or <so later, he received a 
communication from a friend of his, a functionary of the 
highest rank, and one who would surely know whereof he 
spoke, warning him that his arrest and deportation to 
Siberia had been determined upon, and urging him to 
leave Russia without an hour’s delay. “ I enclose pass- 
ports with false names for you and Monica Paulovna,” his 
friend concluded. . . . 

So, with a few hundred rubles in his pocket, and such 
clothing as could hastily be thrown into a portmanteau, 
my father — accompanied, of course, by me, his only child, 
— took the first train for the frontier ; and a few days later 
we were in the French capital. 

That is why we lived in Paris. 

The manner of our life there. . . . Ah, Dieu de 

dieu , voild une histoire ! 

At first we lived in sufficient comfort at one of the 
hotels in the neighborhood of the Opera ; for my father 
did not so much as dream that his properties would be 
put under the seal of the Government, and fully expected 
to touch his income as regularly henceforth abroad as 
formerly at home. But in this he was very soon un- 
deceived. Writing to the manager of his estates to com- 
mand remittances, he was informed by return of post that 
his revenues had been stopped by the authorities, pending 
his appearance in St. Petersburg to answer the charges 
of political untrustworthiness there lying against him. 

After that, the question of ways and means became for 
us of the most pressing nature. 

The little ready money that he had taken with him up- 
on our flight had rapidly dwindled, until now less than a 
thousand francs remained ; and where more was to come 


12 


MEA CULPA. 


from was a dubious and appalling problem. My father, a 
Russian noble of the old style, was the incarnation of the 
unpractical ; intensely proud, sensitive to the point of 
effeminacy, accustomed to every luxury, and as irrespon- 
sible as a child in the handing of money ; a man who had 
never earned, nor thought of earning, a kopeck, yet who 
had never hesitated to throw away a hundred rubles ; a 
man, in fact, who had done nothing all his life but dream, 
read, talk, and spend ; than whom there could be no one 
more amiable, more polished, or more inefficient. He 
was gifted with a fine intellect, and in the face of an ab- 
stract theory of any kind was all enlightenment and pene- 
tration ; but the smallest concrete difficulty left him as 
dismayed and as helpless as a baby. How was such a 
man to provide food, clothing, and a home for himself and 
his eighteen-year-old daughter ? . . . . This was an 

enigma over which my father pondered much, about which 
he discoursed much, but in relation to which he did — 
nothing, except wring his hands and weep. 

Gradually I came to realize that the duties of bread- 
winner must necessarily devolve upon me. 

What could I do ? 

I was a good pianist. I could teach music, if I could 
find pupils. 

I had had an English — or, rather, an American — gover- 
ness from the time I was five till I was fifteen years old ; 
therefore I could also teach English, or I could trans- 
late. 

I had finally a little talent for drawing and painting, 
which might possibly be turned to some practical ac- 
count. 

That was what I felt I could do. But there was an- 
other question for me to face, almost equally grave : 
What would my father allow me to do ? I knew that he 
would object passionately to my doing any work at all for 


FATHER AND DAUGHTER. 


13 


pay. I knew that, upon my broaching the subject, he 
would cry out, “ I would rather starve ! ” . . . I knew, 
in one word, that we should have a struggle. 

To cut a long story short, we had a struggle that lasted 
several days ; for two of those days my father would not 
speak to me, thinking in that way to make me feel his 
displeasure and to break my will ; but in the end my 
obstinacy proved to be of sterner stuff than his, and I 
gained my point. At least, he said : “ Do as you please, 
do as you please.” 

Then I began to work. 

I gave lessons in music and in English to the pupils 
whom I was able to procure ; I translated sensation novels, 
English and American, into French, receiving four hun- 
dred francs for each volume from a publisher in the Palais 
Royal ; and I colored photographs for a photographer in 
the Rue de Rivoli. (Since my marriage, I may say in 
passing, that publisher has caused to be printed upon the 
title-pages of the novels I anonymously translated for 
him, “ Traduit de V anglais par Madame la Princesse Leon- 
ticheff : ” whether to the greater annoyance of Prince 
Leonticheff or myself it would be difficult to tell.) Thus I 
contrived to gain a livelihood for my father and myself; but, 
- believe me, it was a most meagre, shabby, and precarious 
livelihood. For my own part, however, I must own that I 
was not altogether unhappy. It was my youth, no doubt, 
which enabled me to adapt myself to our changed con- 
ditions without too much discomfort. Besides, I was 
thoroughly occupied ; I had no time, no strength, for dis- 
content. Indeed, had it not been for the constant sense 
of care and responsibility that I carried with me, I should 
have had little to complain of. But my poor father! For 
him, as he often said, it was scarcely less than purga- 
tory. Deprived of all that ease and largeness of existence 
to which from his cradle he had been habituated, he suf- 


14 


ME A CULPA. 


fered keenly also from the humiliation of finding himself 
dependent for his daily bread upon the exertions of his 
daughter. His only solace lay in devising schemes by 
which to re-establish the family fortune . . . oh, but 

schemes ! At last he put one of them in operation. After 
the assassination of the Emperor he began to write a his- 
tory of Russia, from the earliest times to the present day. 
Once completed, he was sure the publishers would vie 
with each other to purchase his manuscript. At all events, 
it kept him busy, and so perhaps rendered him less con- 
scious of the privations of his life than he would otherwise 
have been. 

In the matter of lodgings we had gone steadily from 
bad to worse, until now, in 1883, we had two communi- 
cating rooms up four flights of winding stairs in the 
Hotel du St. Esprit, a dingy maison garnie, inhabited 
chiefly by students, in the Rue St. J acques ; certainly, in 
view of my sex, not the most desirable quarter of Paris, 
but considering our requirements, the cheapest. Our 
morning coffee and our mid-day breakfast I prepared over 
a spirit-stove ; for our dinner we went to a restaurant in 
the Boulevard St. Michel, where a table d’hote — of a merit 
by no means extraordinary, it is true — was to be had for 
one franc twenty-five. For the society of congenial human 
beings, I confess, we pined. The French students by 
whom we were surrounded we had no reason to love. 
Almost our only friend was the composer Armidis, half 
Greek, half English, an inspired musician, an exquisite 
poet, and the handsomest, the shabbiest, the most im- 
probable, whimsical, and entertaining man I had ever 
known. He dwelt on the other side of the Seine, but he 
came frequently to see us, and w'ould often meet us at the 
ordinary where we dined. The worst dinner, with Armi- 
dis at the table, was always a merry and delightful affair. 
He was in receipt of an excellent income, and had no one 


FATHER AND DAUGHTER. 


15 


but himself to spend it on ; yet one of his eccentricities 
forbade his ever buying a suit of clothes. He always 
wore the cast-off garments of his friends ! The effect was 
generally fearful and wonderful. Seeing him from behind 
you would have thought, “ a beggar.” But the moment 
you beheld his face, with its snow-white hair and beard, 
his fresh complexion, his fine, proud features, his large 
eyes, full of color, daring, and intelligence, you would have 
corrected yourself : “ No ; a man of genius and distinction, 
a poet, an artist, a prince among artists, in masquerade.” 

We were, it must be admitted, Bohemians ; but Bohe- 
mians from necessity, not from choice. Even I, resigned 
as I was to our circumstances, would have been surprised 
if anybody had told me that I was happy. Yet now I 
know that those were almost the happiest days of my life. 


II. 


My father’s duties as the historian of Russia required 
him to go a good deal to the public libraries, for the 
purpose of consulting authorities. He would frequently 
leave the Hotel du St. Esprit directly after his morning 
coffee, and not return till toward the hour for dinner. 
On these occasions he would take his second breakfast at 
some cheap restaurant in the quarter where he was at 
work. 

One evening in the early part of March, 1883, when he 
came home from a day spent abroad like this, I saw, the 
instant he entered our rooms, that something had hap- 
pened to disturb his tranquillity. He was manifestly in a 
state of great nervous excitement, which he was doing his 
utmost to conceal, but which anybody with the smallest 
faculty for observation could not have failed to discover 
at a single glance : excitement, moreover, which was 
plainly of a sorrowful, not of a joyful nature. A spot of 
scarlet burned in either cheek. He kept his eyes persis- 
tently averted from mine ; but now and then I caught a 
glimpse of them, in spite of him, and then I saw that 
they were red and swollen, as if he had been weeping. 
At dinner, though he tried hard to eat, it was evident 
that he had no appetite ; his hands shook, that held his 
knife and fork ; when he spoke, which he did but seldom 
and briefly, though he was ordinarily a voluble talker, 
his voice trembled, and it had a peculiar strained ring. 
After dinner he sat for two hours or more motionless 
before our fireplace, glaring at the coals, once in a while 
breathing a prodigious sigh, but never uttering a syllable, 


FATHER AND DAUGHTER. 


IT 


I was puzzled and frightened, yet something withheld me 
from questioning him. I felt that it would be better to 
wait until in his own time he should volunteer an expla- 
nation; which I did not doubt that he would sooner or 
later do, for he was a man who craved sympathy in all his 
emotions, sad or glad, as irresistibly as his body craved 
food, drink, or sleep. ... At last, however, still 
without a word, he rose, put on his overcoat, and took his 
hat and stick. 

At that I could hold in no longer. 

“ You are going out? ” I inquired. 

“You see it, do you not ? ” he answered, a little petu- 
lantly. 

“ Where are you going ? ” 

“Where? What is that to you? Must I account to 
you for all my movements ? ” 

“ Certainly not. Only, I should like to know ; and I 
had no reason to suppose that you would object to telling 
me — that is all.” 

“ Well, I am going nowhere — anywhere — to walk.” 

“ It is late. It is past eleven. You had better go to bed.” 

“ Bed ! ” he cried, in his strained, unnatural voice. 
“ And what for, pray? ” 

“ To sleep, of course,” said I. 

My father could never bring himself to realize that I 
was a grown-up woman ; he invariably treated me, and 
doubtless thought of me, as a little silly girl in pina- 
fores. . . . 

“ My child,” he now replied, with an accent of profound 
solemnity, “I shall never be able to sleep again. You, 
who are young, you, who do not know what care and re- 
sponsibility mean — you may sleep. For me, I have that 
upon my mind which renders the very name of sleep 
preposterous.” 

Also, at his moments of emotional disturbance, he was 
2 


18 


MBA CULPA . 


prone to don, in approaching me, an armor of magnilo- 
quence, to become oracular and rhetorical, if not even a 
little theatrical. 

“ You had better tell me what it is,” I urged. “ You 
had better share your trouble with me. Two pairs of 
shoulders can bear it more easily than one.” 

He looked at me very hard for an instant ; his eyes 
began to blink, his lips to pucker ; he burst into tears. 

“ What is it? What is it, father? ” I entreated. 

He shrugged his shoulders, and, with a despairing 
gesture, cried out, “ I am a ruined man, a ruined man ! 
When you stopped me, do you know what I was going to 
do? ” he asked. “ I was going out to put an end to my 
existence. Within a few minutes I should have been lying 
dead at the bottom of the Seine. To-morrow you would 
have found my lifeless corpse upon the marbles of the 
Morgue.” 

He sank into his old seat before the fire, and passively 
allowed me to take his hat and stick. For some minutes 
he wept silently without speaking. I knelt at his side, 
and held his hand, and waited. 

By and by, always with a certain magniloquence, and 
employing the tone that one would naturally use in ex- 
plaining the affairs of an adult to a little child — address- 
ing me, that is to say, de haut en has — he proceeded to 
make the following confession, in his studied, old-fashioned 
French : 

“ I am, as I have already told you, a ruined man. The 
story is of the shortest, the simplest, the most tragical. 
Young as you are, I believe that you had better hear it, 
so that you may understand the fatal combination of cir- 
cumstances that drive your father to a premature and 
ignominious grave.” . . . 

His voice died out, and for a breathing-space he was 
silent. Then he went on : 


FATHER AND DAUGHTER. 


19 


“ Figure to yourself that to-day, at noon, as I was leav- 
ing the Bibliotheque Nationale, to go to breakfast at a 
neighboring table d’hote, I had no sooner set my foot in 
the street than I ran almost into the arms of . . . 

whom do you think ? My old friend Sagoskin, Serge 
Petrovitch Sagoskin, the author of ‘ Russ and Finn,’ 
whom I had not seen for a matter of five years. He 
greeted me with the utmost effusiveness, inquired cordially 
about you, and insisted upon my accompanying him to 

his hotel, to meet the distinguished novelists Z and 

X , whom he had invited to breakfast. I assented 

with pleasure ; and we had a most delightful meal, diver- 
sified by conversation as edifying as it was entertaining, 
and in which, you will be glad to learn, your father did 
not shine only as a listener.” 

“Yes? yes? ” I prompted, as he paused again. 

“ Well, my child, as we were taking our coffee, Sagoskin 
proposed a little turn at Zinkalinka — a proposition which 
was generally received with acclamation, and to which I, 
for one, agreed the more readily, because, invariably en- 
joying good fortune at cards, I was confident that I should 
lose nothing, and hopeful, my dear, of winning enough to 
constitute an acceptable addition to our fund of ready 
money — though, indeed, the game being undertaken for 
amusement purely and simply, was projected upon so 
small a scale that no one could win enough to talk about. 
But see how things turn out ! From the beginning I lost ; 
and contrary to every reasonable probability, I lost con- 
stantly to the end. It was a complete deveine. Reluctant 
to show the white feather to my antagonists, and ani- 
mated by the conviction that the luck must infallibly 
change, as well as by the desire to retrieve my losses, if 
not to come away a gainer, I continued to play until I 
found that I owed the bank, which was held by Sagoskin 
himself, a matter of five hundred francs. Then, in de- 


20 


MEA CULPA. 


spair, I pleaded an appointment with you, and took my 
leave. I explained to my host that I did not happen to 
have five hundred francs upon my person, and gave him 
my note-of-hand for the amount, promising to redeem it 
to-morrow morning. . . . Such, in fine, is the di- 

lemma in which I find myself placed. Inspired by the 
ambition, not ignoble, to contribute what I might to the 
expenses of my family, and having every reason to believe 
that Providence had put in my way an opportunity for 
doing so, I am, by an entirely unprecedented and anom- 
alous run of ill-luck, reduced to this desperate alternative : 
either I must pay Sagoskin five hundred francs to-mor- 
row, or I must avoid dishonor by taking my life.” 

He drew a long breath and flourished his hand, to in- 
dicate that his narrative was finished. Clearly he did 
not reproach himself ; it was not for me to reproach 
him. 

Presently he added, in the tone of a man moralizing 
upon a perfectly impersonal event : “It is one of those 
incomprehensible examples of the apparently blind and 
wanton brutality of Fate, which force certain thinkers to 
accept the atheistic and pessimistic hypothesis of life, 
that you should lose a father, that Russia should lose an 
historian, and that I should be cut off in the very prime 
of my career, all for a paltry consideration of five hundred 
francs ! ” 

In a moment he demanded, “ How much money have 
you in hand ? ” 

“ Less than two hundred francs,” I answered ; “ and 
we shall need every penny of that to pay our way to the 
end of the month.” 

“ Have we any property that . . . that you could 

exchange for money at the Mont de Piete ? ” 

“ Alas, my father, I have already pledged everything that 
we had of value in the world. Our jewellery is all gone. 


FATHER AND DAUGHTER. 


21 


Only our clothing is left ; and you know as well as I do 
how much, or rather how little, that is worth.” 

“ But your furs ? ” 

“ Sold as long ago as November.” 

“ Eh bien, it is then as I supposed. I must die.” 

I paid little heed to his talk of suicide, for I knew that 
it was but a figure of speech. “If you should go to 
Serge Petrovitch,” I ventured, “ and frankly explain to 
him your circumstances, and ask to be forgiven a debt 
which is, after all, only a card debt, and not one contracted 
for an equivalent ? ” 

“ Seigneur Dieu ! ” he exclaimed. “ Is my daughter, 
then, devoid of the least sentiment of pride, of honor? 

. . . Monica, I would rather die a hundred deaths ! ” 

“ Well, then . . . ? ” I questioned. 

“ It comes to this : we must borrow.” 

“ Whom can we borrow from ? ” 

“Reflect a moment. You will see that there is but one 
person in Paris to whom we can apply for a loan.” 

“ Who is that ? I cannot think of any one.” 

“ Why, Armidis, of course.” 

“Oh!” I cried. 

“ Yes ; we must borrow five hundred francs from 
Armidis. He will gladly lend them, I am sure. He is 
all good-nature.” 

“But how are we ever to repay him? ” 

My father shrugged his shoulders. 

“ Oh, we must somehow achieve the impossible. Or 
perhaps something will turn up. But that is a question 
for the future. For the present our dilemma stands thus : 
we must borrow five hundred francs from Armidis, or I 
must take my life.” 

“ Very good,” I acquiesced, though with a heart by no 
means light. “Then you must go to Armidis in the 
morning and borrow the money.” 


22 


MEA CULPA. 


“I?” my father almost screamed, starting half-way to 
his feet. “ I go to him? . . . Are you mad? Or 

is it that you have not the faintest comprehension of my 
character ? Rather than ask Armidis to lend me a sou I 
would cut out my tongue ! ” 

“ But then-— ? ” I faltered. 

“ No ; it is you, my child, you who are young, and who 
do not feel these things as I feel them — it is you who 
must go to Armidis. Go to him in the morning, raconte 
lui quelque hisioire, and bring the money home to me. 
. . . Do not refuse,” he implored passionately. “ I 

exact it by right of my position as your parent,” he added 
with an accent of authority. 

“ If I go to Armidis for you,” I returned, “ I cannot tell 
him a story. I must tell him the truth.” 

“ In other words, you will sacrifice your father’s honor ! ” 
he cried, wildly. 

“I can’t see how your honor will be involved. You 
have done nothing dishonorable,” said I. 

“ You are right,” he agreed, his excitement suddenly 
subsiding. “Armidis, though not a man of the world, 
has sense and reason. He will understand. . . . 

Then you will go ? ” 

“ Yes, I will go.” 

“Ah-h-h ! ” sighed my father, a long sigh of relief. 

His relief presently intensified into a complete reaction 
of spirits. He opened a bottle of wine and demanded 
something to eat. 

“We will sup, ma fille. We will forget our late annoy- 
ances in a little feast. . . . Oh, you are a good girl ” 

— he took my chin in his hands and smiled into my eyes 
— “ yes, a very good little girl. I cannot complain of you. 
You are, as the English say, a chip of the old block.” 

He was very merry and good-natured for the rest of the 
night. 


FATHER AND DAUGHTER. 


23 


“ If I had played a little longer,” he declared, “ the luck 
would certainly have changed. It was bound to do so by 
the immutable law of chances. Yes, I conclude that I was 
foolish to withdraw from the game. If I had persevered 
I might have brought you home. . . . who knows how 

many hundreds, how many thousands of francs? ” 

After I kissed him good-night, and had reached the 
threshold of his room, on the way to my own, he called 
me back ; and holding his candle above his head, so that 
it cleared my face and left his own in shadow, “ If — if you 
should ask Armidis for a thousand, instead of five hun- 
dred ? ” he suggested. 

I was perplexed. “ But why ? What for ? ” I queried. 

“ Why, then I could resume the game to-morrow, and 
take my revenge.” 

“ Oh!” 

“Well?” 

“ Oh, no, I cannot. It is out of the question.” 

“ But be reasonable. It is the quickest way of repay- 
ing him. I should expect to win twice, three times, as 
much. By the law of chances I can prove to you that the 
probabilities are as one million to one against my losing.” 

“ No, no, no,” I insisted. 

He gave a gesture of impatience. Then he paused, and 
seemed to meditate fora moment. In the end, “I will 
speak to you again in the morning,” he said. “ Good- 
night.” 


III. 


He was as good as his word ; and in the morning, surely 
enough, he renewed his efforts to persuade me to ask 
Armidis for double the amount of his indebtedness to 
Sagoskin. He began by commanding me to do so, by 
virtue of his position as my father. Failing in that, he 
sought by argument to convince me that it would be wise 
and right. Finally, he addressed his appeal to my love 
for him, not to deny him what he so earnestly desired. 
But I was firm in my refusal. 

“ Very well,” he said at last. “ I must submit to your 
feminine unreasonableness and obstinacy. I must suffer, 
though I should be hypocritical if I pretended to forgive, 
your unfilial disobedience. Go, then, at once, and fetch 
the money. I will wait for you here. You ought not to be 
gone longer than a couple of hours at the furthest. . . . 
Go. Why do you delay ? ” 

“ My dearest father,” I returned, speaking as gently as 
I could, yet fearing that my words would provoke a storm, 
“ I implore you not to be angry with me ; but it is im- 
possible ... let me explain . . . it is impossible 

for me to go at once. This, as you know, is my busiest 
day in all the week. I have lessons continuously till three 
o’clock. If I disappoint my pupils, I not only lose the 
price of their lessons — which we could ill afford at any time 
— but I run the risk of being dismissed from their employ- 
ment. That would be to fly in the face of Providence, 
especially in view of our present difficulty. I cannot 
reach Armidis’s house before this afternoon.” 

“ In that case,” said he, with an effect of the calmness 


FATHER AND DAUGHTER. 


25 


of despair, “ you need not go at all. Debts of this nature 
must be liquidated within twenty-four hours, or the 
debtor is forever dishonored. I must hand the money to 
Sagoskin before five o’clock this evening, or I must die. 
Since you deem your lessons to be of superior importance 
to your father’s honor, even to his life, go to them. That 
is my last word, . . . except adieu.” 

“ Au revoir, mon cher petit per e,” I said, kissing him on 
the forehead, and stroking his fleecy thin white hair. “ I 
will have the money here by half-past four at the latest. 
It will not take you more than half an hour to go to 
Sagoskin’s hotel, so that before five o’clock you and he 
will be quits. Au revoir A 

“ Au revoir, ma fille” he responded, relapsing suddenly 
into his simple, cheerful self. “ I shall spend the day 
quietly at home, arranging the notes I took at the library 
yesterday morning.” 

I had never been at Armidis’s lodgings, but I knew that 
he lived at No. 239, Avenue de la Grande Armee, away 
out beyond the Arc de l’Etoile, near the Porte Maillot. 
It was a quarter-past three when I inquired for him of the 
concierge. 

“ Yes, madame ; Monsieur Armidis is at home,” the 
concierge informed me. “At the bottom of the court, 
staircase A, fourth story, at the left.” 

I crossed a damp and dirty courtyard, which reeked 
dreadfully of the stables by which it was surrounded, and 
in winch a stableman, who treated me to an inquisitive 
stare, was busy washing a carriage ; passed through a nar- 
row, dirty doorway, distinguished by a huge A in red 
paint; climbed four flights of dark back stairs, that 
smelled forcibly of cooking, whereof onions and cabbages 
seemed to furnish the basis ; and pulled the bell-cord at 
the left-hand side of the last landing. 


26 


MEA CULPA. 


My heart was beating strenuously. I felt that I had 
come upon a very delicate and painful errand, and I prayed 
mentally for strength and courage to perform it. Though 
my poor dear father chose not to acknowledge it, I believe 
that I was naturally as proud and as sensitive as himself, 
and that I shrank as fearfully as he could have done from 
the humiliation of asking Armidis to lend me money. I 
tried to think how I had better word my request ; and the 
possibility of a refusal, of a rebuff, was constantly present 
to my imagination. It was also entirely possible that he 
might not have five hundred francs to lend, in which case 
. . . ! Several minutes passed, and the bell had not been 
answered. I rang again. What if he should be absent, 
after all? The concierge might easily have made a mis- 
take. Again I waited several minutes, and still the door 
remained closed in my face. A good deal disheartened, I 
rang for a third time. 

At last came the sound of footsteps from within. Then, 
from behind the door, Aj-midis’s lusty voice, with an 
accent of plaintive remonstrance, called out in French, 
“ Yes, yes. I hear. I’m wake. No need to ring a thou- 
sand times ! I’m not, upon my word, I’m not the Sleeping 
Beauty. Now go away, and in ten minutes you may bring 
me my coffee.” 

“ Mr. Armidis,” I said in English, “ it is I — Monica 
Banakin.” 

“ Oh ! You don’t say so ! Is it really ? Why, how 
do you do ? I thought it was the concierge come to wake 
me up. And I was vexed with him for ringing so many 
times. As if I were deaf! It seemed so unfeeling of 
him. Oh, they’re a bad lot, ces concierges. Outrageous ! 

. . . You — you don’t mind, do you? Say that you 

don’t mind.” 

“ Mind ! Mind what ? ” 

“ Why, my having thought it was the concierge. I 


FATHER AND DAUGHTER. 


27 


never would have thought it if I had known that it was 
you. But, you see, I really couldn’t know, could I ? I 
was expecting him. I’m so sorry. I hope you don’t feel 
hurt about it.” 

“ Oh, no, not in the least,” I assured him, laughing. 

“ So good of you. I was sure you wouldn’t. You’ve 
got such a kind heart under your forbidding exterior. 
You couldn’t nurse resentment when no offence was in- 
tended. But I thank you very much, all the same. And 
it’s really Monica Banakin — really ? You’re not trying to 
deceive me ? Of course, I’m helplessly at your mercy, 
not being able to see through the door.” 

“ It’s really I,” I said. 

“ Well, then, do you know, you’ve had an inspiration. 
The arrival of a kindred spirit is just what I’ve been 
longing for. Only I didn’t dare to hope for it ; and now 
is seems too good to be true. There ! I don’t believe it 
is you, after all.” 

“ Who do you think it is, then ? ” 

“ Ah, now I’m sure. Yes ; its your voice, your own 
liquid accents. Oh, it’s too delightful ! Do you know, I 
was going over to your shop this evening, just on purpose 
to see you. I was really.” 

“I hope you won’t let that good resolution be shaken 
by my coming here.” 

“ Oh, how nice of you ! Very flattering ! Bocca , 
bocca bella ! But I don’t know. You see, it’s this way. 
I was up all night composing a little melody, writing a 
little verse ; and I wanted to try its effect on you. You’ll 
give me your honest opinion, won’t you ? You must bind 
yourself to that beforehand. Let no false kindness tem- 
per your expression. It’s the best thing, by all means 
the best thing, I’ve ever done : a master-piece, in parvo , 
destined to live till the trump of doom. That’s what I 
think to-day, mind. That’s what one always thinks when 


28 


MEA CULPA. 


one’s latest production is still warm. To-morrow it will 
be cold. Then I shall probably recognize it as just one 
failure more. Agony ! You shall anticipate my to-mor- 
row’s judgment for me, eh ? " 

“ Are you going to perform it at me from behind closed 
doors? ” I asked. 

“ Oh, now, how unkind you are ! ” he grieved. “ So 
heartless ! How can I open the door ? I — I’ve just got 
out of bed. I’m not presentable. It wouldn’t be proper. 
It would compromise me so. Oh, dear, what shall I 
do?” 

In the face of a practical emergency, Armidis always 
assumed the helplessness of a big child : partly, I think, 
for the sake of the drollery of it, but partly because he 
really was, when it came to practical matters, simply a 
great, big, overgrown baby. 

“You might go and dress,” I suggested. “I’ll wait 
here on the landing.” 

“Oh, will you really? Oh, how good you are! So 
much obliged! Forgive what I said about your being 
heartless ; it was said in the stress of passion ; I never 
meant it. I’ll not keep you five minutes. Seulement le 
temps cTendosser une robe de chambre. Shall — shall I 
throw you out something to read ? You could turn your 
back, you know, and I could lay it out on the floor.” 

“No, thanks. I don’t want anything to read. Now 

go-” 

Presently the door was opened, and Armidis stood be- 
fore me, all smiles, and held out both of his fat dimpled 
hands in welcome — hands just like a baby’s, only bigger. 
From throat to foot his tall and robust figure was wrapped 
in a flannel dressing-gown, of a soiled and faded, but still 
sufficiently flamboyant scarlet. 

“ Come ! ” he cried. “ Come in. Soyez la bienvenue. 
I see you’re admiring my costume. I look like a cardinal 


FATHER AND DAUGHTER. 


29 


in it, don’t I ? It was given me by Marvellac, the painter. 
I always put it on when I compose sacred music. Not 
that I’ve been composing sacred music to-day, though; 
tutt ’ altro ; very profane. But I thought you’d enjoy the 
color, and take it as a compliment. Come — this way — in 
here.” 

He showed no curiosity to learn the occasion of my 
visit, but seemed to accept it as a thing quite in the 
natural course of events. 

“ Ecco ! This is my laboratory. It is here that the 
immortal works are executed.” 

He preceded me into the untidiest, the most disorderly 
little room I had ever entered in my life. A vast table 
occupied the middle of the floor, covered with a wild lit- 
ter of books, manuscripts, ink-bottles, pens, tobacco-pipes, 
soiled cups and dishes, crusts of bread, gloves, neck-ties 
. . . in a word, all manner of related and unrelated 

odds and ends. The rest of the room was nearly filled 
up by a grand piano, over the top of which, as well as 
over the seats of the chairs and every available inch of 
the floor, were scattered loose sheets of music, pell-mell, 
as if by the wind. The frame of the looking-glass above 
the mantel was stuck all round with gaudily-colored 
cards, which proved upon inspection to be advertisements 
of the Bon Marche, the Petit St. Thomas, Tin de Bitgeaud, 
and various patent medicines. I inferred from its appear- 
ance that the room had not been swept or dusted for 
months and months. 

He led me straight to the key-board of his piano. 

“ Sit down — is the chair high enough ? — shall I put a 
book? — and play it over once, to familiarize yourself,” he 
said, laying some manuscript music upon the support. 
“ Then I’ll sing to your accompaniment.” 

His manuscript was rather blind — indeed, it looked at 
a rough glance simply like paper spattered over at ran- 


30 


MEA CULPA. 


dom with small dots of violet ink — and I blundered a 
good deal in getting through it ; while he stood at the 
other end of the piano, beating time, shouting out little 
words of guidance — “Softly,” “Faster,” “Not so fast,” 
“Allons done , plus de feu ! ” — clapping his hands now and 
then to encourage me, and when I committed a particu- 
larly brutal error, groaning and writhing in an agony 
which, though facetiously exaggerated, probably had a 
core of reality. 

When I had stumbled to the end of it, “ Oh, murder- 
ess ! assassin ! ” he cried. “ To mangle the poor child of 
my imagination under my very beard like that ! But, 
now then ! Now, once more ! Da capo. Smoothly, 
easily ; kindly, discreetly ; with confidence, with spirit ! 
Bramble-bush ! You have scratched out my eyes ! Now, 
scratch them in again ! ” 

I began, as he bade me, da capo ; and on this second 
trial naturally I did better. He walked up and down the 
room, nodding his head, waving his hand — in fact, mark- 
ing time with his whole body — and keeping his eyes shut, 
while an expression of beatitude shone upon his face. 

“ Brava ! Bravissima ! I forgive you everything. 
You did it nobly. You have atoned. . . . Well,” he 

declared, “ it’s not so good as I hoped, nor so bad as I 
feared. You — you don’t think it’s altogether bad, do 
you ? ” he demanded, eagerly, becoming motionless, and 
scanning my face as if his life hung upon my answer. 

“ On the contrary, I like it very much. I think it’s 
charming,” I assured him. 

“ Charming ! Did you say charming ? Oh, how per- 
functory, how banale ! Charming, quotha. How undis- 
criminating ! Oh, that is the most unkind cut of all ! I 
never would have thought you capable of calling it charm- 
ing. What injury have I ever done to you to be snubbed 
like that ? You cruel thing ! ’’ 


FATHER AND DAUGHTER. 


31 


“ I’m sorry if the word offends you. I think it is 
delightful — full of color, passion, imagination. And the 
harmonies are delicious, and very novel.” 

“ Ah, that is better. Now you see it. The harmonies ! 
Of course ! But wait, wait. I will sing it to you. It’s 
meant for a woman, but I’ll attempt it all the same. 
Tout artiste est un peu femme. Now ! Are you ready ! 
One, two, three ; one, two, three ! Excellent ! ” 

He sang it to my accompaniment in his wonderful 
sweet baritone, joining to the technique of a capital exec- 
utant the fervor and the intelligence of the creative artist. 

“Amd now, Sybil, wise woman, speak. Pronounce its 
fate.” 

He appeared to be delighted with the admiration that 
I expressed, dancing around the room, and insisting, 
“Beally? Really? You’re not saying it to please me? 
You really mean it ? ” And when I had satisfied him of 
my sincerity, “ Very good ! You shall take the conse- 
quences of your words. I shall dedicate it to you,” he 
announced. “ Dedicated to Monica Paulovna Banakin 
by her ardent though aged admirer, the Perpetrator ! 
Won’t that be fine? Romantic, eh? . . . Enfin , it 

is settled. I throw it off my mind. And now you may 
tell me, if you w T ish, to what J am indebted for the un- 
precedented honor of this visit. I do not attribute it to 
pure benevolence ; the desire to afford me the pleasure of 
your society. Nothing wrong, I hope, with the Lily of 
the Field?” 

That was his nick-name for my father, who was very 
punctilious about his dress, who was even, to be frank, a 
good deal of a dandy ; and of whom Armidis — who could 
never deny himself an opportunity to say a sharp thing, 
or to do a kind one — had remarked, “ He toils not, neither 
does he spin ; yet I’ll bet a shilling that Solomon in all 
his glory couldn’t have held a candle to him.” 


32 


MBA CULPA. 


I summoned my courage, told him the story of my 
father’s encounter with Sagoskin, and asked him to lend 
me five hundred francs. 

To my surprise, he took it as a great joke, laughing im- 
moderately, and crying, “ Oh, how sweet ! How ecstatic ! 
Oh, that Paul Mikhaelovitch ! Wasn’t it just like him? 
You know, he solemnly thought he was doing a shrewd, a 
prudent, even a noble thing. I’ll wager he thinks so still. 
Ah, you Russians are absolutely the most exquisite crea- 
tions on the face of the earth. Children ! Why, for pure 
juvenility you beat even the Italians. Oh, I wouldn’t have 
missed this for anything in the world. Thanks so very 
much. Here . . . here is the money.” 

From the clutter upon his table he fished out a tin box 
that had once held Egyptian cigarettes ; and from the in- 
terior of that he took five one-hundred franc notes, and 
handed them to me. 

I began to stammer out some words of thanks, but he 
cut me short. 

“ Come, come ; time is precious, and I want to show 
you my smelting works,” he cried. “ See ! Here is a 
crucible, the common or garden sort that you can buy of 
any chemist for considerably less than a song. Here is a 
spirit-stove. Here is a sheet of tinfoil. Now observe. 
Watch.” 

He lighted the wick of the spirit-stove, and placed the 
crucible, with the tinfoil in it, upon the support. In a 
minute the tinfoil was melted. Then he poured the liquid 
metal out into a goblet of water that stood near by, and 
exhorted me to notice the beautiful and grotesque shapes 
that it took in hardening. 

“ Isn’t it adorable ? Isn’t it fairy-like ? ” he pleaded. 
“ Have you ever seen anything so lovely ? I pick up and 
treasure all the bits of tinfoil I can lay my hands on, 
for the pure joy of doing this. Of course a Philistine 


FATHER AND DAUGHTER. 


33 


wouldn’t appreciate it. But you — I’m sure you do ; don’t 
you?” 

“ And yet you call my father a child ! ” I laughed. 

“Oh, don’t, don’t,” he groaned. “ Don’t say you think 
it childish. That would be more than I could bear. An- 
other illusion shattered ! Let me retain my respect for 
you, my faith in you. I have felt drawn toward you, I 
have felt an affinity for you ; I have taken you to be a 
pure idealist, strictly inconsequential, like myself. Don’t 
be logical, don’t demand a reason for things ; I couldn’t 
bear it, really. Understand that if I had a reason for it, 
I wouldn’t do it ; the joy would be poisoned, the zest de- 
stroyed. . . . But there ! You belie yourself. You 

were dissembling. You were only making believe. Your 
secret heart thrills with the rapture of it as keenly as mine 
does. Enfin , I will see you this evening at the Concombre 
Rose. Good-by.” 

The Concombre Rose was the restaurant in the Boule- 
vare St. Michel, where we dined. 

I found that it was past four o’clock when I left Armi- 
dis. To be punctual at home, therefore, and to spare my 
father the anxiety of waiting for me, I committed the ex- 
travagance of a cab. 

“ Ah, it is you,” he said looking up from his writing- 
table, as I entered the room. “ Well, do not interrupt me 
now. I am in the middle of a paragraph. I will speak 
with you presently.” 

“ But you wanted to put the money into Serge Petro- 
vitch’s hands before five o’clock. You will have barely 
time to do so, if you start at once.” 

“ Hush, hush ; you disturb my train of thought. An 
hour later, more or less, will not matter.” 

Armidis kept his promise to meet us at the Concombre 
Rose — which was rather surprising, for he could never be 
3 


31 


MEA CULPA. 


counted upon to remember a promise of that nature — and 
my father, who had seen Sagoskin, and paid his debt, 
was in such high spirits that he insisted upon ordering a 
bottle of champagne, in which to pledge the friend who, 
he said, had come to the rescue of his honor. Afterward, 
he invited us to go with him to the Odeon, where they 
were playing L i Vie de Boherne. But Armidis was con- 
siderate enough to decline ; so, instead, we went to our 
rooms, and spent the evening over the piano. 

After our guest had left us, when we were on the point 
of separating for the night, “ Ah, Monica,” sighed my 
father, “ if you had only asked him for a thousand ! You 
see, he thought nothing of it. He is so good-natured. 
It is as well to get in debt for a sheep as for a lamb. And 
with that capital to start with, who knows what I might 
have won ? Sagoskin offered to give me my revenge to- 
morrow. He even offered on the spot to throw the dice, 
and make it double or quits. He could not conceal his 
astonishment when I declined. I would rather die than 
let him suspect that my true reason was poverty. You 
see, you have made a mistake. After this, let me trust, 
you will be guided by one who is older and wiser than 
yourself. . . . Kiss me good-niglit.” 


IV. 


And now, of course, the question that I had to face was 
this : How am I to pay our debt to Armidis ? By what 
means shall I be able to save five hundred francs ? 

Not an easy question to answer, because, in the first 
place, our actual living expenses swallowed up every 
penny that I could earn, and, in the second, we were 
already living as economically as it seemed possible for 
two people to do who desired at least a show of decency, 
if not of comfort. I knew that Armidis would not be an 
importunate creditor, that indeed he would be the most 
lenient ; I was sure that he would give me plenty of time, 
that he would let me pay him little by little, in instal- 
ments ; but all the same, the fact remained that we owed 
him five hundred francs, and that somehow, some time, 
our scores must be cleared. It came to this : either I 
must try to increase my earnings, or to diminish our ex- 
penses, or I must do both. How to increase my earnings 
I could not think. In what way, then, could we lessen 
our expenses ? 

The first item in which it appeared to me that a reduc- 
tion would be feasible was that of rent. As I have said, we 
had two communicating rooms on the fourth story. For 
the larger of the two, which my father used as a bedroom 
and study, and which we used in common as a sitting- 
room, we paid fifty francs a month. For the smaller of 
the two, my bedroom, we paid thirty-five. It occurred to 
me that I might be able to arrange with Madame Pam- 
paragoux, our landlady, to let her give me a smaller room 


36 


MEA CULPA. 


still, perhaps up another flight of stairs, for a lower price. 
Madame Pamparagoux was a warm-hearted Meridionale, 
a brave and honest woman. She said at once that she 
could let me have a little room on the top story, looking 
into the court, for twenty francs a month. Thus a 
monthly saving of fifteen francs could be effected at a 
single stroke — not a very big saving, certainly, but deci- 
dedly better than nothing. Then I could give up the 
piano, which — feeling that if I aspired to gain our liveli- 
hood as a teacher of music, I must devote what time I 
could to practising, and so keep myself efficient — I had 
hired for ten francs a month. Finally, perhaps I could 
spare from two to three francs weekly by walking to and 
from my lessons, instead of taking the omnibus. But 
altogether I could see no prospect of my being able to 
put aside more than thirty or thirty-five francs a month ; 
and at that rate, it would take me about a year and a half 
to get quits with our friend. . . . 

In truth, it was a dear experience, that little turn at 
Zinkalinka, whereby my father had hoped to contribute 
something to the support of his family. 

I say that I despaired of managing to increase my earn- 
ings ; and this was because already every hour of my day 
was occupied, and I had not a moment of leisure in which 
to undertake additional work. You see, besides what I did 
for remuneration, I had many duties of a domestic nature 
to perform. For example, I had to mend my father’s 
clothes, and to make as well as mend my own. I had to 
brew the coffee in the morning, to go to market, to cook 
our mid-day breakfast, to wash the dishes, etc., etc. On 
the whole, I was as busy as, with the natural limitations of 
time and of human endurance, I could well be. 

When, however, I told my father of my determination 
to change my room, and to give up my piano, he protested 
that he would not hear of it. 


FATHER AND DAUGHTER. 


37 


“ As for your piano, it is your tool, it is the implement 
of your profession,” he urged, not without reason. “ It is 
senseless, your intention of doing without it. You would 
kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. And as for your 
plan of moving upstairs — my child, you do not consider 
the proprieties. Aside from the fact that I cannot con- 
sent to let you make yourself so uncomfortable — by sleep- 
ing, parbleu , in a room that is no bigger than a closet, and 
which is as black as night even at high noon, looking as it 
does into that narrow court — aside from all that, you must 
remember that you are a young girl, and that it would be 
unseemly to the last degree for you to go so far away from 
me, your father and natural protector, especially in an 
hotel meuble like this. No, we must not be separated, 
above all at night. As for your indebtedness to Armidis 
- — it is a matter for the future.” 

“ Yes. But I must prepare for the future in the present.” 

“ O, piff ! You know perfectly well that he will not 
press you ; on the contrary, he will give you all the time 
that you can possibly desire. What is it? Five hun- 
dred francs ? The merest bagatelle. It is a matter for the 
future. As you are aware, I refuse to regard our present 
straitened circumstances as other than purely temporary, 
arising from an absurd misunderstanding on the part of 
the authorities in Russia. I am in correspondence with 
various influential friends of mine there, to the end of 
causing a statement of my case to be laid before the 
Emperor in person. Of course there are inevitable de- 
lays, legal formalities, bureaucratic obstructions, and so 
forth and so forth ; but eventually these will be termi- 
nated, my affair will arrive, and I shall be reinstated in the 
possession of my properties, if not in all my rights and 
privileges as a loyal member of the Nobility. Then I will 
enable you to return this trifling sum to Armidis with in- 
terest, if you please, at the rate of cent per cent” 


38 


MEA CULPA. 


“It is not interest that Armidis wants, my father ; and 
for the rest, here are four years already that you have 
been hoping from day to day to see justice done you by 
the Emperor. It may easily be four years more before 
your hopes are realized. We must not keep Armidis 
waiting for four years.” 

“Well, then, think of this. I hold a ticket of the value 
of twenty francs in the Royal Italian Lottery. The draw- 
ing takes place in a fortnight. I may be a winner to the 
amount of a million francs.” 

“ Yes, but by your law of chances, what is the likelihood 
that you will ? ” 

“ Ah, it is impossible to reason with you. At all 
events, I hope you recognize that this difficulty is one of 
your own creation. If you had obeyed your father, and 
asked Armidis for a thousand, instead of that beggarly 
five hundred, we should to-day be quits with him, and 
have a comfortable sum in hand besides.” 

“ What is the use of going back to that ? ” 

“ To impress the ill consequences of your disobedience 
upon your mind, my child. But now enough. I will tell 
you what I will do. Rather than allow you to carry out 
the quixotic plans that you have in mind, I will humiliate 
myself so far as to write to my cousin Ogareff, at Moscow, 
and ask him to lend me the money.” 

“ Borrow from Peter to pay Paul ! A quoi bon ? It is 
simpler for me to move upstairs. I assure you I shall 
not mind the change. The room up there is quite as 
good as the one I have down here, only it is a little 
smaller. And although it looks upon the court, it is so 
high up that it gets plenty of light. Besides, I shall 
never be in it, except to sleep. All the rest of the time, 
when I am at home, I am here in this room with you.” 

My father took my chin between his hands, and looked 
me curiously in the face. 


FATHER AND DAUGHTER. 


39 


“ Where do you get your obstinacy, I should like to 
know,” he said. “ Not from me, that is very certain. I 
can be firm, firm as a rock ; but I cannot be obstinate. 
When I discover in your face the expression that is there 
at this moment, I recognize that to reason with you will be 
futile. Very well, then, I submit — only, with this reser- 
vation. It shall not be you who will move upstairs ; I will 
do so. You will move in here ; I will move up there ; and 
thus the affair will arrange itself to our mutual satisfaction.” 

But there was one insurmountable objection to this 
plan ; namely, my father had a predisposition to bronchial 
trouble ; and the doctor had told him that he must always 
sleep in a room that had the sun during the day ; and the 
little room upstairs, looking toward the north, had no sun ; 
while the room downstairs, looking toward the south, had 
the sun almost from the time it rose until it set. This 
objection I at last persuaded my father to admit, and give 
way before. 

Accordingly, on the first of the next month, I took pos- 
session of my new quarters ; and on the same day the men 
came to remove our piano — which, I confess, I could not 
see them do without a sinking of the heart. 

A few evenings later Armidis called upon us. I hap- 
pened at the moment of his arrivel to be alone. My 
father had stepped out to buy some cigarettes. 

Looking into my eyes with a smile that was at once 
quizzical and reproachful, wagging his great white head 
at me, and shaking his finger, our visitor began to drawl, 
in his most plaintive accents, “ Oh, you wicked creature! 
I’ve found you out. So fair, so guileless-seeming, yet al- 
ready a past mistress in iniquity ! Oh, you whitened 
sepulchre, you generation of vipers ! ” 

“ Why, what have I done ? ” I asked. 

“ All night long,” he went on solemnly, without noticing 


40 


MEA CULPA. 


my question, “ I lay awake thinking of your dreadful 
wickedness. It’s been a shocking blow to me. One more 
illusion shattered. One more idol cast from its base. 
Oh, you heartless thing ! You fair-spoken villain ! You 
premature mass of sophistication ! ” 

“ But, really, what have I done ? ” I repeated. 

“ Oh, don’t, don’t,” he expostulated, grievously. “ Don’t 
add hypocrisy to your other vices. Don’t look me in the 
face, and pretend not to know. All night long I had you 
on my conscience ; I couldn’t close my eyes, for the 
thought of how demoralized you were. At last I said, I 
will go to her, I will speak to her, I will labor with her, 
not in anger but in sorrow, and try to move her to repent- 
ance and amendment. But the hard, cynical, burglarious 
gleam in your eye disheartens me. I’m afraid you’re past 
regeneration. The way you brazen it out ! G-give me a 
glass of eau sucree” 

His voice broke in the travesty of a sob. 

“ I haven’t the remotest idea of what you mean, you 
know,” I said, as I went about preparing him a glass of 
eau sucree. His sweet tooth, by the way, was one of 
Armidis’s peculiarities. He always carried a box of 
sweetmeats in his pocket, just as another man would carry 
a packet of cigarettes. But for that matter, he carried 
both. When he wasn’t munching a caramel, or drinking 
eau sucree , he would certainly be pouring voluminous 
clouds of smoke from his nostrils. 

Again he paid no heed to my protestation. “How 
could you do it? How ever could you do it?” he ex- 
claimed. “It’s past my understanding. Only let me 
tell you this, you cruel, heartless, conscienceless thing — 
don’t you ever try to come your grand airs of innocence 
and benevolence over me any more. I’ve found you out, 
I know you for what you are — a reg’lar bad ’un. You 
shameless inhabitant of a fiftli-hoor back ! ” 


FATHER AND DAUGHTER. 


41 


Then of course I knew what it was. 

“ Why, who told you ? ” I cried. 

He put on an inscrutable countenance ; and spoke in a 
tone of profound mystery : “ Never mind, never mind. 
I’ll say no more about it. But the next time that you 
premeditate a crime, just remember this : remember that 
the most skilfully conducted murder will out, and that 
there’s no concealing anything from ME. That’s all ; and 
here comes your father, your poor, helpless, long-enduring 
father. It’s lucky for you I’m not your father. If I were, 
. . . ! ” A threatening frown and gesture completed 
his sentence. 

















PART II 


JULIAN NORTU. 



















































I. 


There came a day in that first week of April which so 
fixed itself upon my memory that whenever I have thought 
of it since it has returned to my mind as vividly and 
freshly as if it had been yesterday, and yet which, at the 
time, I had no reason to suspect would count for more in 
my life than any of the days that had gone before it. 

It was the first real spring day that we had had that 
year. A wonderful soft breeze blew from the south, all 
warmth and fragrance ; the sky was of a tender shimmer- 
ing blue, while here and there clouds as white and pure 
as pearls floated in it. The sunlight was like a vapor of 
gold, in its rich, thick ardor almost palpable. The whole 
world seemed to sing and quiver in an ecstasy of renewed 
exuberant life. When you breathed, you were pierced to 
the quick by an exquisite but indescribable sensation, as 
if, instead of common air, it were some subtle, heady 
ether that you inhaled; and your heart was stirred by a 
multitude of sweet, indefinite regrets and longings, like 
dim reminiscences or vague presentiments of something 
very dear, you could not tell what. Joyous forces that 
had been long asleep in your blood, seemed to awake and 
go coursing through your veins with turbulent vigor ; yet 
all the while a delicious languor pervaded your senses, so 
that you felt no desire to do anything but just bide still 
and exist. It was one of those rare days of early spring 
when everything, even the vulgarest or most familiar ob- 
ject, becomes wrapped in a rose-colored glamour, when 
the ordinary noises of the street fall upon your ears like 


46 


MEA CULPA. 


music, and the faces of the passers-by seem to glow with 
an inner poetic light. 

My last lesson that day was from two till three in the 
Avenue Duquesne, near the Invalides ; and when, at a little 
past three o’clock, I left my pupil, and started to walk 
home, the day was at the very summit of its glory. The 
magic of it penetrated and inthralled me. The shabby 
Rue du Babylone, through which I took my way, seemed 
like a street in fairy-land ; the ragged, dirty children who 
played in the gutters were like little Loves and Cherubs 
in disguise. I felt as if I walked on air ; my heart was 
singing, and it was as much as I could do to keep from 
joining it with my voice, and really singing aloud my- 
self. 

“How strange!” I thought. “It is as though some 
great good fortune had befallen me, I am so happy ; yet 
in reality nothing has happened ; everything is just as it 
was yesterday, just as it will be to-morrow.” 

I felt surcharged, tingling to my finger-tips, with glad, 
buoyant vitality, as if I had drunken a deep draught at 
the very fountain-head of life. 

The scarred and blackened front of St. Sulpice glowed 
all mellow in the sunshine ; and the shop-windows of the 
chasubliers round about had somehow lost their accus- 
tomed effect of garish tawdriness, and acquired a dignity 
and richness of their own. Somewhere out of sight a 
barrel-organ was monotonously grinding forth the aria of 
Ai nostri monti, from Trovatore ; even over that my illu- 
sion extended itself, and it sounded like dreamy, tender 
music. For more than a fortnight the buds of the trees 
in the Luxembourg had been swelling and trying to 
burst ; now, this afternoon, the whole garden looked as if 
it had been sprinkled with a delicate green powder. 
Through the prim alleys children in black pinafores were 
chasing each other, and shouting in their delight. The 


JULIAN NORTH. 


47 


terraces, the water, the facade of the palace, the marble 
Queens of France, bathing themselves in the sun, made a 
picture that had an indescribable charm and sentiment, 
like a scene from a poem. When I came out upon the 
Boulevard St. Michel, all at once my heart gave a leap 
and thrill, for the air smelt of the asphalte, and it was 
like a sudden plunge into midsummer. Almost at the 
same moment, the sun went behind a cloud ; a few drops 
of warm rain pattered down — not enough to wet anybody, 
but just enough to spice the air with a keen earthy 
odor. 

The “ Boule-Miche ” was thronged with people, whom 
the fine weather had tempted out : soldiers, priests, chil- 
dren with their bonnes , hatless shop-girls, and of course 
the inevitable students and etudiantes. Everyone looked 
happy and good-humored. The doors of the shops and 
cafes were all open, and in many of them lounged the pro- 
prietors or the proprietresses, enjoying the air. 

As I entered the Hotel du St. Esprit, and was about to 
go upstairs, Madame Pamp'aragoux darted out of her 
little box of an office, on the ground-floor, and called af- 
ter me, “Mademoiselle! Mademoiselle!” 

“ Yes,” I responded, turning back. 

“ I have a piece of news to announce to you. Come in 
and rest for a minute. . . . Ah ! quelle belle jour nee, 

riest-ce pas ? Un vrai soleil du midi / ” 

She mixed a glass of water and sirop de groseille, which 
she insisted upon my drinking. 

“ And what is your news ? ” I asked. 

“ I have let your room, your old room. A young gen- 
tleman, a young painter, very nice, very handsome, an 
Englishman, named Norse, Monsieur Julien Norse. I 
thought you would be glad to know.” 

“ Yes, I am very glad indeed. I should have been 
sorry if you had lost by the change I made.” 


4S 


MEA CULPA . 


That is all. And yet that day was one of the red-letter 
days of my life. 

The next day brought a relapse into winter. The sky 
was heavy with lowering slate-colored clouds, and a harsh 
wind blew from the east, and there were occasional flur- 
ries of snow. 


II. 


I am going to be absolutely frank in this confession : 
to subdue my pride, overcome my reticence, and tell the 
whole truth, as well as nothing but the truth. Otherwise 
it would have no reason for being, it would defeat its own 
purpose. Therefore I will acknowledge at once what, if I 
obeyed my woman’s instinct, I should deny ; namely, that 
the little piece of news which Madame Pamparagoux im- 
parted to me that afternoon in her office inspired me with 
a certain amount of curiosity concerning the young Eng- 
lish painter who was the hero of it. . . . oh, but a 

very tame, a very limited curiosity, indeed, bien entendu. 

Of course I did not betray this to Madame Pampara- 
goux. My feminine nature, perhaps my human nature, 
prompted me to assume a perfect indifference, and with- 
held me from asking a single question. Yet all the same, 
I presently surprised myself speculating about him. 
. . . though in a quite mild and passive way. 

“ Un jeune monsieur , un jeune pemtre, tres gentil , ires 
beau , un anglais , nomme Norse , Monsieur Julien Norse .” 

Such was the description she had given of him. I found 
my imagination busy trying to construct a theory of him 
from these meagre hints. What would he be like ? I re- 
member I said to myself, “ I shall probably see him some 
day, on the stairs, or somewhere ; and then I shall know. 
But Norse ? Julien Norse ? It doesn’t sound like a very 
English name.” 

That is honestly as far as my curiosity about him went 
at first. 


4 


50 


MEA CULPA. 


But my father was more eager and less reserved. 

“ Let us hope,” said he, “ that he is a possible person. 
Our world is so narrow, any respectable man or woman 
would be a welcome addition. I must avow, I suffer from 
the monotony of our life. I ennuie myself profoundly. A 
new face, a new voice, mind, point of view — it will give us 
a new sensation, a new interest. He is an artist, and he 
is an Englishman ; both of which facts are in his favor. 
I will leave my card upon him. Eh ? ” 

“ I wouldn’t if I were you,” I said. 

“ And why not ? You are the one who always says, 
* No, don’t let’s.’ ” 

“ Well, at all events, I would wait until we have seen 
him, until we have formed some notion of his style. He 
may be, you know, like our other neighbors, quite out of 
the question.” 

“ But Madame Pamparagoux describes him a£ . . .” 

“ Oh, Madame Pamparagoux ! Her standard is so dif- 
ferent to ours.” 

“ True, true. Ah, well, we will leave it to time, we will 
leave it to Destiny ! Che sard sard” 

Many days passed, however, and he still remained but 
a name to us. My father would occasionally hear him, 
early in the morning or late at night, moving about his 
room ; but for the rest, he did not manifest himself in 
any manner. 

“ That young man in the next room to your father’s, how 
he works ! ” cried Madame Pamparagoux, once when I 
met her in the vestibule. “ He has his coffee every morn- 
ing at seven, and leaves the house before eight. He works 
all day at Julien’s, and never comes home before midnight. 
He burns his candle at both ends. Some day he will be 
sorry.” 

At another time, as I was passing through the hall, she 
ran out of her little office and exclaimed, “ Tenez , Made- 


JULIAN NORTH. 


51 


moiselle ! It appears that M’sieu’ your father has made a 
conquest. That young man in your old room, the young 
English painter, Monsieur Norse, to day he asked me, 
‘Who is the superb old gentleman I have just passed 
upon the stairs ? He has altogether the air of a grand 
seigneur , with his noble carriage and magnificent head. I 
should like to paint him. What a Bayard he would 
make ! ’ ” 

My father did not disguise his pleasure when I reported 
this compliment to him. 

“ Something tells me that we shajl like the young fel- 
low,” he said. 

But he protested that he could not remember having 
passed any young man upon the stairs. 

Then for nearly a week my father was confined to the 
house by an ugly cough, and every evening I went alone 
to the Concombre Bose, and had our dinner packed up 
in a basket, which I brought away, to be eaten in our 
room. 

One evening — I being rather later than usual — a young 
man left the restaurant at the same moment with myself. 
When I reached the Hotel du Esprit, behold . . . 

the same young man entered it after me. I heard his 
footstep behind me on the stairs. As I had my hand 
upon the knob of my father’s door, the young man passed 
me, and went into the next room. 

“ So ! That is he. That is our young English painter,” 
I said to myself. 

“ Well, and what does he turn out to be like ? ” de- 
manded my father, when I had told him of our chance 
encounter. 

“He is sufficiently well -looking, though scarcely hand- 
some, as Madame said. He is tall and strongly built, 
but he stoops a good deal. An intelligent face, nose 
rather aquiline, deep-set eyes, whose color I could not 


52 


MEA CULPA. 


distinguish, though they had the effect of dark brown or 
black, dark complexion, and dark brown hair, mustache, 
and beard, the beard being trimmed to a point.” 

“ S-s-s-s ! ” my father hissed, impatiently. “You give 
me a catalogue of material details which signify nothing, 
being disorganized, unsynthesized. What do I care for 
the color of his eyes, the shape of his beard? Does he 
look pleasant? Does he look interesting? Does he look 
possible ? Is he of our kind ? Or is he insipid, com- 
monplace, vulgar, like the others ? ” 

“Oh, no, he doesn’t look insipid, and by no means 
commonplace or vulgar. He looks interesting, yes ; and 
refined. He has an air. He looks clever, and like . . . 
well, a gentleman, in short.” 

“You are very unsatisfactory. I am surprised that, in- 
heriting as you do excellent powers of observation from 
me, you should be so little able to convey your im- 
pressions to another mind. I do not obtain the faintest 
conception of him from all that you have said. I despair 
of doing so ; therefore you need make no further attempt 
to describe him, but tell me in one word whether he struck 
you as a man it would be agreeable for us to make a friend 
of?” 

“He struck me as a promising person, a man who 
would have something to say, yes.” 

We had naturally spoken to Armidis of our neighbor, 
and he had joined in our conjectures anent him with a 
vivacity that was characteristic of his fresh, childlike tem- 
perament. 

“ But,” he said, “ the fun of it all is that he is just ten 
times as curious about you as you can possibly be about 
him. He’s just dying to make your acquaintance, poor 
young man, and he can’t think how to set to work. Of 
course Madame Pamparagoux has turned herself inside 


JULIAN NORTH. 


53 


out. A Russian nobleman in exile, suspected of Nihilistic 
affiliations, and a lovely Russian girl, his daughter. The 
other fellow, the constant visitor, with the peachy com- 
plexion, the white hair, the bland smile, that is Armidis 
— yes, Armidis the composer, whose songs you know and 
admire. Is it romantic, at least ? Does it appeal to the 
imagination ? Then lie’s been struck by your appearance, 
remember. Who is the superb old man ? A Bayard, 
parbleu ! And the young woman, ah ! the young woman 
with the eyes, and the skin, and the hair ! . . .” 

I tried here to interpolate a sarcasm to the effect that 
these were very extraordinary possessions indeed ; but 
Armidis hurried on without heeding me. 

“ He’s a painter, a painter mind you. Therefore he has 
the artistic temperament, he has a soul for color. He would 
give his right hand to know you. He is at his wits’ ends 
to find a method of attack. Why ? Why can’t he come 
up and scrape acquaintance with you without prelimi- 
naries ? Oh, because this is such a horrid, self-conscious, 
stupid, cut-and-dried, conventional world. We haven’t 
the courage of our instincts, of our natural spontaneous 
impulses. We are the slaves of tradition ; we wear our 
ceremonies like fetters. We daren’t be ourselves. Ugh ! 
It is heart-rending.” 

A few evenings later we had just established ourselves, 
Armidis, my father, and I, in our regular places at the 
Concombre Rose, when Mr. Julien Norse came into the 
restaurant, and took a seat at a table at the opposite side 
of the room. 

“ There he is,” I announced in an undertone. “ That 
is he.” 

“ Tiens I ” cried my father, looking over at him with all 
his eyes. 

“ Oh, no, not really,” protested Armidis. “ How can 
you seek so to practise on our ignorance ? ” 


54 


MEA CULPA. 


“ But it is, really,” I insisted. 

“ Oh, but then, cruel ! What did you want to libel the 
poor young creature for? You told us he was English.” 

“ Why, but so he is.” 

“ Oh, no, never, never. He’s never a Briton. He may 
be a Russian, or a Frenchman, Turk, or Prussian, but he’s 
not an Englishman. He hasn’t the English cut at all. 
Not the English physiognomy, nor the English way of 
moving, nor the English anything. Moi, je connais pa 
comme ma poche, vous savez. Heartless wretch ! You 
might as well tell us he’s Chinese.” 

“ But Madame Pamparagoux . . 

“ Tut, tut ! Don’t Madame Pamparagoux me ! How 
dare you ? Her effrontery, pardieu / Madame Pampara- 
goux, indeed ! As if I don’t know ! Intimidation ! . . . 
However, the slander shall be nailed. I’m going over to 
ask him. I shan’t allow him to rest under any such im- 
putation. At least I shall afford him an opportunity to 
clear himself. Fair play ! At the same time I shall say, 
‘Look here, my fine fellow, you’re dying to know the 
Banakins, and the Banakins are dying to know you, espe- 
cially Mademoiselle, who pines for an interesting man. 
Allons , let us put an end to this strained and ridiculous, 
not to say pathetic, situation. Let us emancipate our- 
selves. Come with me. I will present you. You shall 
finish your dinner at our table.’ . . . He will want 

to hug me.” 

He rose to his feet, as if to carry out his threat. 

“ If you do anything of the kind,” I said between my 
teeth, “ I will kill you.” 

He flung me a defiant laugh from over his shoulder, and 
to the unspeakable consternation of my father and myself 
off he went, with a comical mincing gait, straight across 
the room to the table of the young man, where he boldly 
sat down and began to talk. As he talked the young man 


JULIAN NORTH. 


55 


first looked puzzled, then lie smiled, then laughed out- 
right, finally got up, and next moment he and Armidis 
were bearing down upon us, arm in arm. 

I felt as if my cheeks were afire. 

“ Allow me, Mr. Banakin, Miss Banakin, to present Mr. 
Julian North,” said Armidis, with a grand flourish. “ It’s 
been a chapter of sad misunderstandings, from the first. 
And all because you would accept the testimony of an in- 
competent witness. Let it be a lesson to you. Julien 
Norse, forsooth ! And English into the bargain ! Oh ! 
dear, what is the world coming to ? Mr. North is an Am- 
erican, a free born American, and he is shameless enough 
to glory in it. Madame. Pamparagoux ! . . . Do you 

know ” — he addressed the young man, but he pointed to 
me, shaking his fat forefinger — “ Do you know, she tried 
to bully and cower me into admitting that you were Eng- 
lish. Fancy ! As if I couldn’t tell ! Oh, she’s capable 
of anything, anything. Sit down. Here comes your 
soup.” 

Poor Mr. North looked rather embarrassed, but he man- 
aged to make a sufficiently graceful bow, and then to de- 
posit himself in a chair. There was a moment of silence 
— awkward enough. But Armidis terminated it by begin- 
ning to laugh — his merry, musical, contagious laughter. 
We all laughed. We had almost a fou-rire. It was a good 
thing. It cleared the air. 

“ We are very glad to know you, Mr. North,” my father 
said. “If you are from America, no doubt we have ac- 
quaintances in common. For ten years, I had an Ameri- 
can instructress for my daughter, a most talented and 
accomplished woman, one Miss Goodale — Miss Laura 
Goodale. Perhaps you know her, or her family ? ” 

“ No,” returned Mr. North, taking the question, which 
seemed to me rather far-fetched, with the most respect- 
ful seriousness, and speaking with an air of deliberation, 


56 


ME A CULPA . 


“I cannot remember anybody of that name. But per- 
haps — perhaps we come from different parts of the. coun- 
try.” 

He had a singularly sweet voice, and scarcely any Am- 
erican accent ; but he spoke with a slight hesitation, not 
quite a drawl, as if he might at one time have been troubled 
with stammering, but had cured himself. 

“ She came from Boston,” said my father. 

“ All, yes, I come from New York.” 

“ Of which Boston is a suburb, no? ” 

“ It would make a . . . well, then, a ... a 

B . . . Bostonian feel very sad to hear me answer 

yes,” he replied. 

The difficulty that he had with the B of Boston con- 
firmed my impression that he stammered a little. 

“ Are you to be long in Paris ? ” Armidis inquired. 

“ Six months or so. I have been here three years and 
a half already, and I came to stay four.” 

“ Oh, then you are an old Parisian ; and we thought 
you had just arrived. Human error ! ” 

“ I have just changed my lodgings, that’s all. I was at 
the Hotel de Carthage, Rue Gay-Lussac, but I had a mis- 
understanding with the landlady, and had to move. I’ve 
been dining here at the Concombre Rose these two years 
on and off. I have often seen you here, and wish . . . 

well, then, wish . . . well, then, wished that I might 
know you.” 

When he hesitated in his speech, it was his habit to 
help himself over the rough place by repeating “well, 
then,” until he could go on. I don’t know why, but the 
effect of his half-stammer was somehow pleasant. 

“ Oh, dear,” sighed Armidis, “ what a contrary world ! 
Two years lost irrecoverably! Why — why didn’t you 
come up and speak to us ? ” 

“ I never should have dared.” 


JULIAN NORTH. 


57 


“ De Vaudace , de Vaudace , et toujours de Vaudace ! ” cried 
Armidis. “ Consider me.” 

“Yes . . . but . . . pas trop d’audace ,” re- 

joined Mr. North. 

“ Well, his impduence ! ” exclaimed Armidis, drawing 
himself up with mock resentment, and appealing to my 
father and me. “ I like that. Trop d’audace, indeed ! 
To snub me in this public manner ! ” 

“ I have, as you see,” confessed Mr. North, “ a' great 
talent for . . . well, as the French say, for putting 

my foot in my plate.” 

This set us all off laughing again. When sobriety was 
restored, my father took the word. 

“You had in mind, no doubt, Mr. North, the inscrip- 
tions over the three gates of Busyrane,” he suggested. 

“ No. What were they ? ” the young man wondered. 

“ They are quoted somewhere from Spenser by your 
American writer Emerson. Over the first gate it was 
written, Be bold. And over the second gate, Be bold, be 
bold, and evermore be bold. But then, over the third 
gate, Be not too bold ! ” 

My father made his little point with great gusto, and 
in his stateliest, courtliest manner, punctuating it with a 
bow. I could see that the young man looked at him with 
admiring eyes, and listened to him with deference ; for all 
which I liked him none the less. My father, perceiving 
the same thing, was encouraged to continue. . . . 

“ In happier days, sir, when I found my dearest occu- 
pation and distraction in my library, I was equally an 
earnest lover and an industrious student of the works of 
your immortal Emerson. I even translated some of his 
poems, most inadequately, into the Russian language. 
But nowadays, alas, I have little time for such pleasures. 
My daughter and I are both, in our respective paths, 
condemned to take part in the struggle for existence. 


58 


MEA CULPA. 


You must know that we are unfortunate enough to be in 
exile.” 

“ Yes, I know that ; and I hope . . . ” He hesitated, 

and colored up . . . “I hope you will let me say 

that I honor you for it. It seems to me that no decent 
man could help being a Nihilist, if he lived in Russia.” 

“ Look out ! Where is your foot now ? ” cried Armiclis, 
laughing. 

“ A Nihilist ?” my father repeated, at the same time. 
“ Oh, no, let us hope not. I should like to explain to 
you . . .” 

And he seized the occasion to set forth in some detail 
his differences with the Nihilists, or Revolutionists, and 
to explain the causes of his own residence abroad. 

“ All the same,” said Mr. North, when he had done, 
“ if you will allow me to say so, I think I should be a 
Nihilist, if I lived in Russia. I could not take a reason- 
able or philosophic view of things, if I lived in Russia. I 
had a friend here in Paris, a Russian, a sculptor — lie’s 
dead now, poor fellow ; died of consumption — who prej- 
udiced me a good deal. It was a long story, but the 
point of it was this. When he was a lad, fifteen or sixteen 
years old, his mother was . . . well, then . . . 

his mother was . . . well, then . . . flogged to 

death, by order of the Governor, or chtef man, or what- 
ever he is called, of the district where they lived. I’m 
sure I should be a Nihilist, I should be for exterminating 
the whole tree, root and branch, if I lived in a country 
where they do things like that.” 

“ Oh, how horrible, how horrible ! ” I cried, involun- 
tarily. 

“ My opinion sums itself up in three words,” said my 
father. “ It is worse than futile to fight the Devil with 
fire. You cannot overcome evil with evil. Things are 
wrong in Russia ; that, unfortunately, must be admitted ; 


JULIAN NORTH. 


59 


but dynamite, terrorism, anarchy, are equally wrong ; and 
two wrongs do not make a right.” 

“ Oh, goodness, gracious me ! ” expostulated Armidis, 
grievously, writhing in his chair. “ AYhen are you going 
to finish ? I’ve stood it in silence just as long as I can. 
So horrid ! Such a shocking subject ! What have we 
done to deserve it ? And at dinner, too ! When we ought 
to forget that there are such things as pain and evil in 
the world. Do let’s talk of something else. Let’s smoke : 
smoke’s a disinfectant. Here — here are cigarettes.” 
While he held out a paper of cigarettes with one hand, 
he dropped five lumps of sugar into his cup of black coffee 
with the other. “ What shall we do to recover our 
frivolity? Let’s — let’s go over to my rooms and have 
some music.” 

To this proposition, after some little debate, we assented 
unanimously ; and, as the evening was mild, we proceeded 
to the Avenue de la Grande Armee on the roof of an 
omnibus. Having seen us comfortably established in his 
work-room, Armidis begged us to excuse him for a little, 
alleging that he had to go out to make a few emplettes — it 
was a favorite word of his ; I never knew him to use the 
English, purchases. 

“What a joy he is,” said Mr. North, after he had gone. 
“ I don’t know when I met anybody so ... so in- 
vraisemblable, or so fascinating.” 

“ Invraisemblahle ! It is exactly the word for him,” 
cried my father. 

“ What’s more, he’s as good and kind as he is surpris- 
ing and entertaining,” said I. 

“ Oh, for that — pas mal my father acquiesced. 

“ Of course,” Mr. North went on, “ I’ve known him by 
reputation this long while. Everybody knows his music. 
But the man himself is an experience. I had always sup- 
posed he was French, or something. The name sounds 


60 


MBA CULPA. 


so — Victor Axmidis. Yet he turns out to be an English- 
man.” 

“ Half English, half Greek,” I explained. 

“However, he is more English than anything else,” 
put in my father. “ He was born in England, and 
educated there. He has never lived in Greece; I doubt 
if he has ever even been there. Of late years he has 
spent most of his time in France and Italy. But he is 
really of no nation, of no class or variety. He is sui 
generis. A freak of nature. What you call a sport, a 
spontaneous variation. He prides himself upon acknowl- 
edging no fatherland, upon being a citizen of no country, 
a subject of no throne. I remember once I quoted to 
him in jest those lines of Sir Walter Scott — 

1 Breathes there a man with sonl so dead 
Who never to himself hath said, 

This is my own, my native land ? ’ 

whereupon Armidis instantly responded, ‘Yes, I am 
that man.’ ” 

“ I’m sure I never can thank him enough for coming 
up and speaking to me this evening,” said Mr. North. 

“Oh, his sang-froid , his impudence, is unrivalled,” 
observed my father. “ And that was a fair specimen of 
it. I should be curious to learn how he excused himself 
to you.” 

“Why, that was just the beauty of it. He didn’t 
excuse himself at all. He simply sat down at my table, 
and said quietly, as if it were the most natural thing in 
the world, ‘ Good-evening. Hadn’t you better come and 
sit with us? It’s bad for the . . . bad for the 
. . . well, then . . . the digestion to eat alone. 
My companions — you know who they are, your neighbors. 
As for me, my name is Armidis, Victor Armidis, if you 
set any store by names. The Banakins will vouch for 


JULIAN NORTH. 


61 


my respectability, though appearances are against me ; 
or I can refer you to my banker. I see you’re an Amer- 
ican . . Of course I was overjoyed.” 

At this juncture we were interrupted by the return of 
our host. 

“Well,” he demanded, “is there anything left of my 
character? Or have you talked it all to shreds and 
tatters? . . . Materials for a supper ; we’ll be hungry 

by and by,” he added, referring to a basket that he 
carried on his arm. “ Now, you two men,” he went on, 
“ are only here as chaperons. Monica Paulovna and I 
are going to make a joyful noise, but you needn’t feel 
under the slightest obligation to listen. You may talk 
together, if you like, or you may read. Here’s literature,” 
and he threw an armful of books down upon the floor 
between them. 

Then he led me to the piano, and began to sing over 
various of his recent songs to my accompaniment. After 
that he sang several other songs, not of his own composi- 
tion. Finally, at his request, I played a little. And so 
we went on till past eleven o’clock. The two chaperons, 
meantime, disdained the books that Armidis had offered 
them, and formed a very attentive audience, giving us the 
benefit of their comments and applause. 

“Now let us sup,” said our composer. 

He cleared the litter from off his table, sweeping most 
of it summarily upon the floor, and opening his basket, 
proceeded to lay its contents out in a row. First came a 
magnum of champagne ; then a paper of sweet cakes and 
pastries ; then a cube of galantine, a loaf of bread, a pot 
of pate-de-foies-gras, a box of marrons-glaces, and another 
of assorted bonbons. 

After which he left the room for a minute, and when he 
came back he bore a big ;bray, covered with knives and 
forks, dishes and glasses 7 


62 


MEA CULPA. 


“ Now, then, to the table,” he cried. “ And everyone to 
his taste.” 

He popped the cork out of the magnum and filled our 

glasses. . . ' 

Oh, we had a merry supper. We sat over it, talking 
and laughing, till almost one o’clock. Armidis consumed 
an incredible quantity of sweets, smoked an incredible 
number of cigarettes, said an incredible number of amus- 
ing things, and imbibed quite half the champagne — dis- 
solving if you please, three or four lumps of sugar in every 
glass, for which my father called him a heathen, while 
he plaintively defended himself by saying, “ Ingratitude ! 
I go and get vin brut, sour enough to melt a Christian’s 
teeth, because I’m unselfish, and I know that the Histo- 
rian of Russia, being an ascetic, prefers it so ; and then he 
makes faces and snubs me and calls me naughty names, 
because I temper it to the shorn lamb. Viper ! ” And 
all the while his face, with its beautiful bright eyes, its 
pink and white complexion, and its fleecy hair and 
beard, glowed like an incarnation of happiness and good- 
humor. 

“ I would as soon think of sugaring this galantine,” said 
my father. 

“ Well, and why not ? ” retorted Armidis. “ I assure 
you it’s very good with sugar.” 

“ Good! ’’^gasped my father. “ I believe there is no 
length to which you would not go for the sake of a para- 
dox. I — I defy you to try it.” 

“ Needless to defy me. I was going to do it anyhow,” 
said Armidis, with perfect coolness. Whereupon he cut 
off a generous slice of galantine, snowed it over with soft 
sugar, and deliberately ate it, with every sign of hearty 
relish. 

“ It is too much, too much,” sighed my father, rising. 
“ After that we must beat a retreat. Who can tell what 


JULIAN NORTH. 


63 


he may not do next ? I cannot feel that we are safe in 
his abode.” 

So we put on our things to go home. 

“ I’ll escort you to your door,” said Armidis. 

And late as it was, he did so. He hailed a Yictoria in 
the street, and in that, while he and Mr. North occupied 
the strapontin, we were whirled across the town to the 
Hue St. Jacques. 

At our door he asked Mr. North, “ Are you in a hurry 
to go to bed ? If not, prithee come and take a walk with 
me. I for my part, never go to bed till daylight. The 
day is the best time to sleep ; and three or four in the 
afternoon is the proper time for rising. Let us go for a 
walk. We will talk over the Banakins.” 

So while my father and I were climbing upstairs toward 
our bedrooms, he and Mr. North were walking off arm in 
arm in the direction of the Boulevard. 


III. 


Thenceforth we saw a great deal of Julian North. He 
became, in fact, a member of our little circle. Almost 
every evening he formed one of our party at the Con- 
combre Rose ; then, after dinner, he would very likely go 
with us for a stroll through the Luxembourg, in the soft 
spring twilight, and when it got dark, perhaps he would 
return with us to the Hotel du St. Esprit, to finish the 
evening in my father’s room. As the season advanced, 
moreover, we would spend the fine Sundays that came in 
the country somewhere — at Nogent-sur-Marne perhaps, 
perhaps in the Bois de Meudon, sometimes as far away as 
Fontainebleau, sometimes no farther than Suresnes — and 
it was seldom that Mr. North did not accompany us. 

On that first night of our acquaintance the ice between 
him and myself had scarcely got broken. But only the 
next afternoon, as I was leaving a house in the Boulevard 
Haussmann, where I had given my last lesson for that 
day, whom should I meet almost at the door but Mr. 
North ! And after we had greeted each other, and ex- 
claimed upon the coincidence that had brought us to- 
gether, it turned out that we were both upon our way 
home ; whereupon he said, laughing, “ Really, I don’t see 
but you will have to let me walk with you.” 

So we walked home together through the lovely spring 
weather ; and as we walked we talked ; and somehow we 
seemed to draw each other out, so that very soon we were 
talking as eagerly and freely as if we had been old friends. 
At first we talked of Armidis, and he told me how the 


JULIAN NORTH. 


65 


composer had kept him up, tramping the streets with 
him, till four o’clock in the morning, entertaining him 
with a flow of quaint paradox and whimsical drollery. 
Then we talked of my father, for whom he professed an 
enthusiastic admiration, saying that he was the most 
beautiful old man he had ever seen. Then we talked of 
Art, discovering upon that theme many ideas, ideals, 
likes, and dislikes in common ; then of Paris, of the Pari- 
sians, of France and the French, of our Latin Quarter, of 
the Hotel du St. Esprit, the Concombre Rose, the mani- 
fold pleasantnesses and unpleasantnesses of Bohemia ; at 
last of ourselves. 

I remember, while we were speaking of the French, I 
said that I liked French women very much, but that 
French men were odious to me. He answered to this, 
“ Oh, no, you are a little mi just. Frenchmen, if you bar 
out their attitude toward women, are very good fellows. 
But a Frenchman regards a woman as if she were a piece 
of bread.” 

He paused, as if he had finished ; and I asked, “ How 
do you mean ? ” 

“ Why, first he wants to butter her, and then eat her,” 
he said, which struck me as rather good. 

At last we talked of ourselves. By insensible degrees 
we had drifted to the ground of personalities and confi- 
dences ; and almost before I was aware of what I had done, 
I had told him of my work as a teacher, of its difficulties 
and anxieties, of its compensations, and of my secret as- 
pirations as a musician ; while he told me of his work at 
Julien’s, of the studio he shared with two friends in the 
Boulevard de Clichy — “ Whence I had just come when I 
had the good fortune to meet you,” he said — of the pict- 
ure he had sent to the Salon, and how he hoped it would 
be well hung, but supposed it wouldn’t be, and how if 
only somebody should be inspired to buy it, he could pro- 
5 


66 


MEA CULPA. 


long liis stay in Paris for a while, whereas, otherwise, he 
would have to return to America in the autumn — “ Because 
then I shall have finished my four years as a Valentine 
prizeman, and my allowance will come to a deadly stand- 
still, and I must go home to join in the scramble for 
bread and butter.” A certain Mr. Valentine, he explained, 
had died, and by his will had left a sum of money to estab- 
lish the Valentine Prize Fund, the income of which was 
to maintain perpetually four American art-students in 
Paris, each receiving three thousand francs a year for 
four years ; and every autumn one of the scholarships 
fell vacant, and was thrown open to competition ; and in 
the competition of 1879 Mr. North had been the winner. 

We did not walk very fast ; indeed, we sauntered along 
in a most leisurely fashion, stopping every now and then 
to look into a shop-window, or to admire some street 
vista, or some effect of light and shadow, or to watch 
some of the many tragedies and comedies that are always 
to be witnessed on the Paris pavements ; and thus it took 
us considerably more than an hour to reach the Rue St. 
Jacques ; and by that time we had quite forgotten that we 
were mere acquaintances, who had only met the day 
before. 

I remember that when I was alone in my room, after 
that walk and talk, I felt wonderfully exhilarated and 
elated, and that I could not help singing as I went about 
the things I had to do. 

We all agreed that our life was fuller and pleasanter 
for his entrance into it. My father called him a precious 
acquisition. “ I cannot quite make him out,” he added. 
“ He has perfectly the manners and the little traits and 
habits of a man of our own world. In his dress, in his 
carriage, in a thousand small ways which cannot be defined, 
though they are unmistakable, as well as in the fine draw- 
ing and modelling of his face, he reveals the gentleman, 


JULIAN NORTH. 


67 


the man not only with breeding and education, but with 
a pedigree. You cannot make a gentleman in one, two, 
no, not even in three generations, any more than you can 
make a gentleman’s park. Some centuries are required. 
This young man is a gentleman in the old, the proper 
sense of the word. Yet here he is living the life of noth- 
ing more nor less than a poor Bohemian art-student ; 
lodging in the Hotel du St. Esprit, dining at the Concom- 
bre Bose, evincing his poverty by a hundred signs. Ca 
rn intrigue. You know I am not romantic, my reason is 
always paramount to my imagination; yet sometimes, 
when I observe him, I say to myself, I will lay a wager 
that this is some grand seigneur in disguise.” 

“ They don’t have grands seigneurs in America,” said 
Armidis ; “ and as for your sage observations about gen- 
tlemen and gentlemen’s parks, it seems to me that some- 
where in the course of my reading I have once or twice 
before met with a like sentiment, similarly expressed. . . 

But North is apparently a very respectable young person, 
and certainly a good listener, which is more important. 
He’s disgracefully round-shouldered, and he hasn’t flesh 
enough, and he’s too enthusiastic, especially on the sub- 
ject of Whistler’s painting, and on that of Monica Paul- 
ovna’s hair. But his eyes are honest and intelligent, his 
forehead is well shaped, he has a sweet mouth, and very 
nice, nervous hands. His voice is pleasant, his sup- 
pressed stammer adds a note of pathos, and his accent 
is singularly decent for an American. He has a good 
deal of humor, and keenly appreciates my best things. 
Whether he can paint or not, we’ll know when the Salon 
opens. Meantime, let’s enjoy him.” 

To me, when my father was not present, Armidis 
said, with a quizzical laugh, “ For you, my dear, he’ll be 
a valuable, though probably in the long run a painful ex- 
perience. Oh, I see how things are moving. Fie, fie ! 


68 


MEA CTILPA. 


Yon pale women with the red hair are the very deuce and 
all where men are concerned; and those melancholy, 
artistic, grand-seigneurish fellows, with the pointed 
beards, are terribly dangerous to female hearts. But I’ll 
thank you to remember that except for me he’d have re- 
mained a stranger to you. Poor young thing ! ” 

I paid no attention to Armidis’s insinuations. That 
they might have a soul of seriousness under their appear- 
ance of levity, did not occur to me. I liked Mr. North 
very much indeed.'" I found him extremely interesting. 
His stammer, and a certain air of sadness that he had, 
made me feel sorry for him. And I realized that, un- 
til we knew him, there had been a great void in my 
life, due to my having no friend or companion of any- 
thing like my own age, but of which I had not been 
clearly conscious until now that it was filled. It seemed 
perfectly natural that in our little party of four he and I 
should usually pair off together, leaving Armidis and my 
father to each other. 

When the Salon opened we all went with him to see 
his picture. 

“ It is on the line,” he said, “ which is better luck than 
I ever dared to dream of. . . For the rest. . . ? ” 

He expressed the point of interrogation by a suspen- 
sion of the voice, a shrug as of resignation, and a glance 
as of questioning despair. 

The title of his picture was Une Reverie;, and it repre- 
sented a woman, life-size, nude, lying at full length upon 
a tiger skin, a wealth of black hair in disarray over her 
shoulders and down her breast, a half emptied demi- 
tasse of coffee at her elbow, a yellow-covered novel laid 
face downward on the floor at her side, with her right 
hand resting on it, and between the pink fingers of her 
other hand a light cigarette, while from her lips a deli- 
cate stream of smoke wound upward, and her eyes fol- 


JULIAN NORTH. 


69 


lowed it with an expression of dreamy, sensuous languor. 
It was painted in the most advanced realistic manner, 
with a broad, free stroke, very vigorous, very effective ; 
the drawing was faultless, the flesh full of life and blood, 
the atmosphere so palpable, so warm and humid, that it 
never suggested itself to you to think, “ She would be 
cold.” 

“ Your technique deserves all praise,” said my father. 
“ Drawing, modelling, coloring, textures, values, are irre- 
proachable. But, if you will permit me to be frank, I do 
not like your point of view. Mark that I find no fault 
with your subject — a nude woman, lazily enjoying her- 
self with her novel and her cigarette, is a perfectly good 
subject — only with the point of view from which you have 
treated it. It is too material, too literal, it lacks that 
spiritual note which should always be present in art. It 
represents life, but it offers no criticism upon it.” 

“ Tut, tut ? ” cried Armidis. “ Heresy ! The point of 
view is right. Criticism of life ! Philistine ! Bour- 
geois ! . . . Kindred spirit, brother Pagan, accept the 
hand of fellowship. ” • 

He shook the painter by the hand. 

“ I regret but one thing,” he went on, “ and that is 
your title. Your title is literary, it suggests a story, and 
is therefore to be deplored. However, I forgive you that 
offence, if you wdll never do so any more. The treatment, 
if you will permit me to be frank, is very fresh and dis- 
criminating, but a little, just a little, young. It may re- 
ceive an honorable mention ; you see they have hung it 
with respect ; it could not be better hung. But if you 
hope that it will find a purchaser, you are storing up a 
disappointment for yourself. It is over the heads of the 
people who buy pictures. They, too, are Philistines. 
They, too, will demand a criticism of life, a point of view. 
I see you have French blood in your veins.” 


70 


MBA CULPA. 


“Why, how can you tell that?” Mr. North queried, 
in manifest surprise. 

“ Am I blind ? How can I tell that you have a nose on 
your face ? ” 

“ Why, do I look French ? I never knew that before.” 

“ Look French indeed ! Hear him. Vaniteux / No, 
you look like a Yankee of the Yankees — tout ce quit y a de 
plus Yankee. But you draw too well. The French twist 
to your brush. And then no Yankee, no Anglo-Saxon, 
could have been so inexorably true to his art, could so re- 
lentlessly have left the sentimental element out of his pic- 
ture, the criticism of life, the point of view. No Teuton, 
in short. The painter of pure Teutonic race must always 
either preach a sermom or tell a story. You have done 
neither. You have assimilated the French idea too per- 
fectly not to have a French ancestor somewhere up your 
family tree.” 

“How do you account for the fact that the greatest liv- 
ing painter, he who is most strictly and purely an Artist, 
and nothing but an Artist, happens to be a Teuton, an 
Anglo-Saxon, and a Yankee ? ” 

“If it were true, I should account for it simply by say- 
ing that no rules apply to great geniuses, that Genius by 
its very nature is an exception to all rules, and a law unto 
itself. But, my dear fellow, your premises are false ; the 
gentleman to whom you refer is not a Teuton, is not an 
Anglo-Saxon. He may have a tithe of Anglo-Saxon blood 
flowing remotely somewhere in his body, but all that goes 
to his brain is Celtic, which he inherits from his ancestors 
the McNeills. However, this is trifling. You evade my 
question. Confess, are you not partially French ? ” 

“ Half French,” he confessed. “ My mother was 
French.” 

I thought, as he pronounced that word, mother, his 
voice softened almost imperceptibly, and trembled a little. 


JULIAN NORTH. 


71 


As we were walking home — my father and Armidis 
leading ns by some little distance — he said to me, “ I see 
you didn’t like it. I don’t wonder. I shall never paint 
anything in that vein again. Your father was right. It’s 
sordid, it’s of the earth earthy. It has no spirit, no signifi- 
cance, no point. You look at it just as you would listen 
to an anecdote ; then you ask, ‘ Well, what of it ? Wliat’s 
the point ? ’ I meant to paint a woman ; I realize now 
that I have painted simply an animal, the female of the 
genus homo. But you see — I don’t know whether you 
will like what I am going to say, but it’s the truth — you 
see, I did it before . . . well, then, before . . . 

before I knew you. Yes, that is it. Before I knew you. 
My ideas have changed a good deal since then. I’ve had 
some new light.” 

I made no reply to this speech of his. It embarrassed 
me ; it filled me with a vague uneasiness ; yet neither the 
embarrassment nor the uneasiness was though unpleas- 
ant. It was as if he had touched an exquisitely sensitive 
spot, that tingled at the touch, yet somehow craved to be 
touched again. 

“By Jove,” he exclaimed suddenly, “when I tell my- 
self the simple fact, that only a fortnight ago we didn’t 
know each other, had never even spoken to each other — 
oh, it’s preposterous, it’s incredible. How mysterious it 
is, the way years pass, and you live your life in a suffi- 
ciently contented fashion, never realizing that there is 
anything wanting to it, and then one day you meet some- 
body, in a most casual manner, a lot of sheer accidents 
having led up to it, and, the first thing you know, that 
person has become a power in your life, perhaps the 
power, the determining influence, in relation to whom all 
the meaning and purpose of your life shape themselves ! 
And then you can’t realize that you had ever really lived 
at all before that day. Your former existence has sunken 


72 


MBA CULPA . 


away, into oblivion and indifference, like tlie months 
before you were born. All your former ambitions seem 
so trivia], your former pains and pleasures, hopes and 
fears, so absurdly petty and insignificant. It’s terrify- 
ing; because you can’t help thinking, What — for in- 
stance — what if I hadn’t just happened to hit on the 
Hotel du St. Esprit, among all the hotels of the 
Latin Quarter ? What if I had gone elsewhere than to 
the Concombre Rose for my dinner that night a fortnight 
or so ago ? It takes my breath away. How strange it 
is ! I can’t help half believing in destiny after all. Why, 
it’s too humiliating to believe that these very most decisive 
crises in one’s existence are the results of pure blind 
chance, isn’t it ? ” 

He said all this rather in the tone of a man solilo- 
quizing, than in that of a man addressing an interlocutor, 
so again I was spared the necessity of answering. But 
his words sank into my mind, and many times afterward 
came back to me, the subject of reflection and specula- 
tion. 

This much I may say with all truth : that I supposed 
of course he meant by the pronoun “you” not me alone, 
but our party, Armidis and my father and myself. 


IV. 


One evening, in the Jardin du Luxembourg, he told 
me something of his life before he had come to Paris. 

My father and Armidis were seated, smoking and 
chatting, at one of the tables of the little cafe ; Mr. North 
and I were walking up and down the terrace by the 
fountain, within sight of them, but out of hearing. The 
air was warm and still ; the distant, muffled murmur of 
the town was like a soft under-tone, to which the occa- 
sional liquid notes of the birds in the trees furnished a 
pleasant desultory counterpoint; there was a dim pink 
light in the sky above the house-tops, reflected from the 
sunset. I had spoken of my mother, whom I could just 
vaguely remember, a pale beautiful face smiling upon 
me in my childhood. Then he spoke to me of his. 

She was French, he said ; not of France, but of New 
Orleans, in America — a Creole. In 1858 she had mar- 
ried his father, Eustace North, and left the South to go 
and live in New York, where her husband was a bar- 
rister. . . . 

“It was the wildest sort of a love-match. She be- 
longed to a family of the most devout Catholics, while 
his people were of the sternest sect of New England 
Puritans. They had to run away together, and it was 
years before their parents relented, and then they did so 
only in a half-hearted way. She was eighteen when she 
married, and scarcely nineteen when I was bom. I never 
felt that she was very much older than myself. She had 
the gift of perpetual youth, of perpetual girlhood. She 


74 


MEA CULPA . 


died when she was thirty-eight, and I was then almost a 
grown man.” 

He said she was not only the sweetest and the gentlest 
woman he had known in all his life, “ With that gentle- 
ness and sweetness that are almost peculiar to a certain 
type of Frenchwoman,” but she was also the most beau- 
tiful and the most brilliant. . . . 

“ I used to sit still and look at her for hours at a stretch, 
just revelling in her wonderful beauty ; and I have never 
heard anyone, man or woman, talk as she could talk ; 
with such wisdom, such wit, such lightness of touch, such 
simplicity, and yet such warmth and color. She had 
temperament and imagination. When I would read a 
story or a fairy-tale, I always thought of the heroine as 
being like my mother. I loved her not only with the 
tenderness, the affection, that one naturally gives one’s 
mother, but with an intensity, an ardor, that amounted 
to a passion, an adoration. She fascinated me, dazzled 
me. She was like one of my fairy-princesses in flesh and 
blood. And so kind with it all, so untiringly kind and 
good to me ! . . . Well, then, as time went on, as I 

grew older, I began to realize that my father, . . . 

well, then, . . . well, then, hate, . . . well, then, 

that my father hated me. He had always been very 
stern and distant with me, and little by little, as I cut my 
wisdom-teeth, it dawned upon me, it was borne in upon 
me, that I was hateful to him. He was a very quiet, unde- 
monstrative man, apparently very cold ; but it was really 
a case of still waters running deep, of fire in ice. He 
had an intensely passionate nature, and he worshipped 
his wife like a lover, and he hated me as a lover might 
hate a rival. I came gradually to understand this, and I 
saw that she knew it too. If he was present, she would 
hardly notice me, or would do so only a la derobee, when 
his back was turned, or he didn’t happen to be looking. 


JULIAN NORTH. 


75 


Then, when he was absent, she would take me to her, 
ind cover me with kisses, and tears, and caresses, as if 
o make up to me for her neglect. Oh, I wasn’t exuber- 
antly happy.” . . . 

He interrupted himself long enough to roll a cigarette ; 
but when he had finished it, instead of lighting it, he 
Suddenly crumpled it up in his hand, and threw it away. 
Then he went on. . . . 

“ She had always been very frail and delicate ; and at 
last she began to keep to the house, and then to her room, 
and then to her bed. She was fading away little by little. 
My father used to go about the house, speaking to no one, 
wringing his hands, and staggering almost as though he 
was drunk. Oh, it was frightful. Just before Christmas, 
1878, she died. ... I didn’t see my father for many 
'(lays, nearly a fortnight. He hid himself in his bedroom 
jail that time. Then one evening he sent word for me to 
■come to him in the library. He was very pale, and thin, 
and old-looking ; and his eyes — oh, they were terrible, so 
wild, so desperate. I went toward him, impulsively, 
with my hands stretched out. But he stopped me. 
“ Only a word, only one word,” he said. “ I have only 
one word to speak to you.” I waited, and at last he went 
: on. This is what he said to me. He said, “ Your 
mother is dead. You have killed her. Yes, just as cer- 
tainly as if you had stabbed her, as if you had poisoned 
her. Why did you ever come into the world, to thrust 
i yourself between her and me, to rob me of her, first of 
her love, and then of her life ? You have killed her. 
She never loved me after your birth as she had before it ; 
and ever since, she has been failing, failing. She never 
( recovered from the pain you caused her — yes, you ! For 
\ nineteen years, nineteen years, I, I who loved her, I have 
had to watch her dying inch by inch — all thanks to you. 
jVnd now she’s dead. Only thirty-eight years old, in the 


76 


MEA CULPA . 


very prime of her womanhood, and she is dead. Oh, you 
may guess how I love you. . . . Now I want you to 

go away. I can’t bear to see you, to feel that you are in 
the house. Go away. Wherever you please, only some- 
where out of my sight, out of my hearing. I will make 
you an allowance, as much as you please. Only go. Go, 
and save me from the necessity of seeing you, of being 
reminded of you. That is all. That is what I sent for 
you to say.” 

Mr. North paused for a moment ; then, abruptly, he 
hurried on. “Of course after that, after he had spoken to 
me in that way, I had no idea of taking an allowance 
from him. I had known for a long time that he wasn’t 
fond of me, but I had never dreamed that it was as bad 
as that ; that he held me responsible for my mother’s ill- 
ness ; he had never spoken to me on the subject before > 
and I had only felt in a general way that he disliked meJ 
Now, what he had said rankled. My pride got up, and I 
was hot with resentment. ... I was within a year or so 
of getting my degree at Columbia College ; but I’d always 
wanted to be a painter, and I dare say I had neglected 
my classics a good deal to work in the studio of an old 
Frenchman, Monsieur Oudinelle, who was established in 
New York. So, after that talk with my father, I left 
college, and went in for painting in deadlier earnest than 
ever. And in September I was lucky enough to win the 
Valentine Prize. Meantime my father had written to me, 
offering to settle an annuity upon me, and I had written 
back, rather fiercely I am afraid, declining. My pride 
was still up. Now I wrote him again, just three words, tell- 
ing him that I was about to go abroad. That letter he never 
answered. . . . After I’d been here about a year, I re- 

ceived one day by post from New York a document, 
sealed with a red seal, which proved to be what they cal] 
a citation to attend the probate of his will. It was the 


JULIAN NORTH. 


77 


first intimation I had had of his death. By his will he 
left all of his property to various charities, all of it, noth- 
ing to me. Though, after all, I can’t say that I minded 
that especially ; I could have contested the will, you 
know, and very possibly broken it; but my pride was 
still up. The worst of it is, I’ve never been able to get it 
out of my mind that perhaps what he said was true. I’ve 
never been able to get that out of my mind. I see her 
face, her beautiful, sad face, I see it white and worn with 
suffering ; and then I think, Yes, very likely what he said 
is true, and I was the cause of it all. My life has been 
purchased at the price of her broken health and death.” 

He told me this as we paced backward and forward 
through the gathering dusk along the terrace that borders 
the basin of the great fountain in the Luxembourg. It 
did not occur to me to think it strange that he should be 
telling it to me ; it seemed the most natural thing in the 
world. After he had done we continued to walk up and 
down, side by side, for a while, without speaking. He 
had told his story with an .attempt at coolness, even in- 
difference ; but it was plain to me that he was deeply 
moved. My heart yearned out toward him with a strong 
compassionate emotion, that yet somehow was not alto- 
gether sad. It was nearly dark ; only a thin streak of 
dull red, low down in the west, was left of the gloaming. 
Presently he stood still, and leaned over the stone balus- 
trade that fences the terrace, and looked off across the 
water. I could see, dark as it was, that he was very pale. 
I waited at his side, not daring to speak, but longing in 
some way to be of comfort to him. . . . 

Suddenly, he put out his hand, and took mine, and held 
it for a minute with a gentle pressure. I did not think 
of drawing my hand away, or of resenting his taking it. 
It seemed as though the pity for him, pent in my heart, 
somehow passed out to him at this contact. He held my 


78 


MEA CULPA . 


hand, and pressed it ; and it was not till he had released 
it, that all at once I felt a wild thrill and shock, and the 
pulses in my temples began to beat so fast and hard, it 
seemed as though all the strength in my body was drawn 
to them, and as though I should faint for weakness. 

“ There ! You must forgive me for inflicting my stam- 
mering confidences upon you,” he said. “ Only, perhaps 
it is as well that you should know me for what I am — a 
penniless adventurer.” He gave a dry little laugh. “ I 
never regretted that money till just these last few 
weeks. Perhaps you’ll think me sordid and mercenary to 
regret it at all. I suppose your father will be wondering 
what has become of us. It’s got so dark.” 

Mechanically I followed him back to where my father 
and Armiclis were still seated, at the cafe. Then all I 
wanted was to be alone : a great eagerness to get away, 
by myself, in my own room. Yet at the same time I felt 
a strange reluctance to part with him, a strange joy in the 
sense that he was present. 

All that night I did not sleep. All night I kept feeling 
that hand-pressure over and over again ; and little things 
that he had said, and little inflections of his voice, kept 
coming back to me ; and a hjundred times I asked myself, 
“What did he mean? Did he mean. . . .? Could 

he have meant. . . . ? Oh, no, that isn’t possible. 

And yet. . . .* ! ” 

I was miserable, and frightened, and bewildered, and 
ashamed, and happier — oh, happier than I had ever sup- 
posed a woman could be. 

A 


y. 


But the next morning brought a revulsion of spirits, a 
reaction. All my happiness was gone. Only the shame, 
and the fright, and the misery were left — a horrible chill 
and faintness at the heart. 

“ What will he think of me ? What will.he think of me ? ” 

That question kept ringing through my brain, over and 
over again, an obsession, like some hateful tune that one 
has heard, and cannot chase from one’s memory. 

“ He did not mean anything at all. Or even if he 
did . . . ? It makes no difference. But he didn’t. It 
was simply his desire for sympathy. If it had been any- 
body else, he would have done the same thing. But you 
. . . you . . . ! What you did . . . oh ! What 
will he think of you? Oh, I wish I had died, I would 
rather have died.” 

When I remembered it — when I went over it in its 
details, as I was constantly forcing myself to do — it 
seemed as if at the same time I was freezing and burning 
up, and I felt as though I should like to sink into the 
earth for shame. How I had not withdrawn my hand — 
no, had not made the faintest effort to withdraw it — but 
had allowed him to hold it just as long as he pleased — 
until, of his own accord, he had dropped it ! 

As the day dragged away, and the hour approached 
nearer and nearer when I knew that I should have to meet 
him — at the restaurant, at dinner — a great sense of dread 
began to torment me. From the prospect of meeting him, 
when I shaped it in my mind, I shrank unnerved and 
weak, as from the prospect of physical pain. 


80 


MEA CULPA. 


“ I will plead a headache, and stay in my room. I will 
not go to dinner at all,” I said. 

And for a little while this plan afforded me a great deal 
of relief. But then, suddenly, it struck me as of all plans 
the most foolish. 

“No, no! If you do that, it will be like a confession. 
If you do that, he will know, he will know for certain ; 
whereas now at most it can be only an inference with him, 
a suspicion, which he cannot be sure is true. No ; you 
must go and meet him, and behave just as though nothing 
had happened. • You — you must brazen it out, as Armidis 
would say. You must meet him with such nonchalance, 
you must treat him so naturally, in such an unembarrassed, 
matter-of-fact, amiably indifferent way, that he will not 
dare to imagine anything, but will realize that he was 
mistaken, and that you didn’t mean anything either, and 
that it made no impression upon you, and that you simply 
like him well enough as an ordinary acquaintance, and 
nothing else at all.” 

But I felt very nervous, very nervous and ill at ease, as 
six o’clock drew near. Usually at six o’clock he would 
rap at my father’s door ; then we would go on to the Con- 
combre Rose together. Now, at every sound in the pas- 
sage outside our room, I started, and my heart began to 
palpitate. “You must be self-possessed, perfectly self- 
possessed,” I kept thinking ; and I kept rehearsing in my 
imagination the manner in which I should accept and re- 
turn his greeting, the tone in which I must say good-even- 
ing, and the way I must let him shake hands with me, if 
he offered to shake hands. 

Five minutes to six . . . three minutes to six . . . 
six o’clock . . . five minutes past six ... an eter- 
nity to me, waiting from second to second to hear his 
rap at the door. 

“Well,” said my father, “ I don’t believe Mr. North is 


JULIAN NORTH. 


81 


going to stop for ns this evening. It’s past six. I don’t 
think we had better wait any longer. We might lose our 
table. Come.” 

Then it surprised me to find, much as I dreaded meet- 
ing him, that I was decidedly disappointed, when it 
occurred to me, “ What if I should not see him at all to- 
night ? ” 

We went to the restaurant, and took our seats at our 
accustomed table. Armidis was already there, lolling 
back in his chair, smoking a cigarette, and reading an 
evening paper. 

“ Ah, better late than never,” he cried. “ For once in 
my life I was punctual ; and it has taught me the truth 
of my favorite adage, that punctuality is the thief of 
time. I’ve lost five precious minutes waiting for you.” 

We began our dinner. I could not take my eyes off 
the door. Every time it opened, my heart seemed to 
stop beating and stand still, while I looked to see if the 
new-comer would be he ; then, when I saw that it wasn’t 
he, my heart sank with deepened disappointment, as if 
sick for hope deferred. 

Armidis rallied me upon my silence. “Naughty! 
She just sits still and pouts. Furibonde ! Because. . . . 

Never mind. I won’t betray you. But I know, I know. 
Don’t look at me with that stony affectation of indiffer- 
ence, of ignorance. Trying to stare me down ! Brow- 
beating ! Don’t hope to hoodwink me” 

Suddenly I ceased to hear Armidis’s voice. My heart 
had given a great bound, and now it was beating so vio- 
lently, it seemed to suffocate me ; and I felt as if all the 
blood in my body were burning in my cheeks. . . . 

He had come in. He was making straight for us, 
across the space between the door and our table. 

I did not dare to look up, after my first glimpse of 
him. I bent my eyes upon my plate ; my eyelids felt 


82 


MEA CULPA. 


thick and heavy and hot, like curtains of fiery lead. 
“You must be self-possessed, self-possessed ” — the phrase 
repeated itself to the rhythm of my pulses. Yet I sup- 
pose there never was a less self-possessed person in the 
world. 

“ Good-evening,” I heard him say. 

“ Good-evening,” my father responded. “ We had al- 
most given you up.” 

“We were very dull,” said Armidis. “We couldn’t do 
anything but just sit still and pout.” 

“ I was detained at the studio,” he explained, “ and 
then the busses were all full and I had to walk.” 

“ If I don’t notice him, or speak to him, what will he 
think?” I was saying to myself. “I must be nonchal- 
ant and self-possessed. I must look up and speak.” 

So, with the intention of giving him a formal little re- 
cognition, I looked up. But I had overestimated my 
courage. His eyes, troubled and questioning, were fixed 
upon my face. I could not bear them. I had to look 
down again, forcing myself to murmur a faint good- 
evening. 

And yet I had determined to be unembarrassed, nat- 
ural, matter-of-fact ! 

Now I was furious — whether with him or with myself I 
could not have told : perhaps with both. “ Oh, I am a 
fool, a fool,” I groaned inwardly. “Now he will think 
. . . things.” How to cover my confusion ? How to 

retrieve that which I had already shown? All at once 
something seemed to whisper to me, “ Talk ! Talk to 
Armidis. Ignore him, and talk to Armidis. About any- 
thing, no matter what : only as if the thing you were 
talking about were the only thing of interest to you in 
the world.” 

Then I began to talk to Armidis. My tongue was as 
if magically loosened. Armidis met me half-way. We 


JULIAN NORTH. 


83 


tossed the ball backward and forward between us, never 
for an instant allowing it to rest. My father sat still and 
listened, enjoying it as though it were a play. Now 
and then Mr. North would put in a word, but I would 
never pay the least attention to him. All the while I was 
conscious that he was looking at me, with that troubled, 
questioning expression in his eyes. I felt as if I were un- 
der the influence of some exciting, stimulating drug — 
black coffee raised to the tenth power. My cheeks burned, 
my head whirled ; my voice sounded strange to me, in a 
key higher than its natural one ; I was talking not only 
with feverish volubility, but with feverish gayety, laughing 
a good deal, with a laugh that seemed to me hollow and 
artificial : yet I knew that I was talking coherently and 
reasonably. And through it all, under it all, my heart 
was full of a dull pain, as if something were gnawing in it 
to get out. 

When we left the restaurant I took Armidis’s arm, and 
he and I walked on ahead, leaving my father and Mr. 
North to come behind. We went into the Luxembourg. 

Armidis said, “You must confess that I’m very nice, 
the embodiment of complaisance, eh ? ” 

“ Of course, you’re always very nice. But I don’t un- 
derstand just what you mean by the embodiment of com- 
plaisance.” 

“ Oh, yes, you do. I hope you don’t imagine that I’m 
deceived. A mere instrument, a mere tool, a cat’s-paw, in 
your dexterous hands. The weapon of your revenge. I 
see, I see. Not highly flattering ! To be made use of in 
this way ! Another man might resent it. But I’m docile, 
I’m long-suffering. Only, tell me, what has the poor 
young creature done ? That’s my due, I think. If I’m 
to serve your purposes, as you’re compelling me to do, I 
think it’s my due to be initiated into the why and where- 
fore. I want to know whether it’s a holy war. His sins 


84 


MEA CULPA. 


should be as red as scarlet to deserve such treatment as 
you’re dealing out to him. Or perhaps — you have so 
many divine qualities — perhaps you make it a practice to 
chasten those you love.” 

“ You are horribly blasphemous, Mr. Armidis ; and I 
haven’t the least idea what you mean, or even what you’re 
talking about.” 

“Fie, fie ! ” he cried. “ Now you’ve gone too far. Now 
I must punish you for your shocking hypocrisy and un- 
truthfulness. Retribution! I’ll be the avenging angel. 
I’ll teach you.” 

He halted and turned around. 

“ Banakin ! Banakin ! ” he called out to my father. 
Presently my father and Mr. North had come up with 
us. “ I want to talk to you, Banakin, about a little mat- 
ter, before I forget if. Will you walk on with me ? Mr. 
North can take charge of Monica Paulovna.” 

Then he and my father went off together, and I was 
left standing alone with Mr. North. 

There was an interval of silence, awkward, painful. 

Then, “Shall we walk ? ” I heard him ask. 

“ I don’t care,” I answered. In reality my heart was 
fluttering with fright and nervousness, but I noticed that 
my voice sounded ill-natured and sullen. 

We began to walk, very slowly. For awhile he did not 
speak. 

At last he said, abruptly, “I see that you are angry with 
me about something, Miss Banakin. I hope you will let 
me ask what ? ” 

“Angry with you? Oh, no, not in the least.” 

I forced the words out with an effort. My voice shook 
perceptibly. 

“ Well, perhaps that was giving myself too much im- 
portance. Anyhow, I’ve managed to displease you in 


JULIAN NORTH. 


85 


some way, that’s very certain ; to get into your bad books. 
I don’t know, I can’t think, what it can be. Whatever 
it is, I wish you would believe that . . . well, then, 

that . . . that I did it unconsciously. I wish you 

would tell me what it is.” 

“ I’m sure I don’t know what you mean, Mr. North. 
What right would I have to be displeased with you ? ” 

Again my voice sounded ill-natured, contemptuous, 
sulky ; yet again I was aware of no feeling save fright 
and nervousness. 

“ Why, I might easily have done something, without 
knowing it, in my stupid way — I might have said some- 
thing, without meaning to — that has annoyed you, or 
given you offence. I told you the first evening we ever 
spoke together that I had a talent for putting my foot in 
my plate. You see, when a man stammers, he’s always 
saying the thing he didn’t mean to. He starts out to say 
something, but then as he approaches the necessary 
words, and sees them looming up threateningly before 
him, he very likely gets scared away, and in order to 
cover his embarrassment he seizes hold of the first easy 
words he finds at hand, and the result is that he says 
something quite different to what he started out to 
say, something that he hadn’t in the least premeditated, 
and something that is sure to be malapropos, and very 
possibly worse. . . . Well, at all events, it’s certain 

that you haven’t treated me this evening with your usual 
friendliness and frankness.” 

“Oh, I assure you, you are entirely mistaken,” I re- 
plied. 

“ No — excuse me — I’m not mistaken, I can’t be mis- 
taken. You’ve hardly noticed me, hardly spoken to me 
or looked at me, all the evening. I dare say I deserve it ; 
of course, I must ; only, I ... I’d ... I d like 
to know, for the sake of my own conscience, what I’ve 


86 


ME A CULPA. 


done. Your good will and good opinion are very precious 
to me. I can’t bear to think that I have lost them. But 
if I have, why, it would afford me some dismal satisfac- 
tion to be told why and how. I should like an opportu- 
nity to explain, to make amends. But of course I can’t, 
if I don’t know what I’ve done.” 

“ Shall — shall we walk a little faster, to catch up with 
my father ? ” I said. 

“ There! ” he exclaimed. “You wouldn’t speak to me 
like that, when you see how anxious and unhappy I am, 
unless you were angry with me, unless I had done some- 
thing to disgrace myself with you.” 

“ Beally, Mr. North, you seem to doubt my word. I 
have told you that I am not angry with you, and that I 
don’t know what you mean. I should think that would 
be enough.” 

“ Well, but then, will you tell me one thing more ? If 
you’re not angry with me, why do you treat me in this 
way ? ” 

“ I’m not treating you in any way.” 

He was silent for an instant. 

“ I should hate to believe that I haven’t done . . . 

that I haven’t done . . . that I haven’t done any- 

thing to deserve it,” he said at last ; “ that you are making 
me miserable in sheer ... in sheer . . . well, 

then, in sheer wantonness.” 

“ Mr. North . . . /” I cried. 

“ Oh, there ! Now you are angry,” he groaned. “ I 
forgot myself. I couldn’t help it. I suppose it’s useless 
for me to ask your forgiveness for that.” 

I could not answer him. I felt that suddenly all my 
strength had deserted me ; and I knew that if I tried to 
speak, or did anything but just hold myself in, I should 
begin to cry. 

“ Won’t you answer me ? ” he pleaded, softly, earnestly. 


JULIAN NORTH . 87 

“ I was beside myself. I didn’t realize wliat I was say- 
ing.” 

“ Oh, don’t, don’t,” I cried. . . . Then, as I felt 

myself trembling all over, and knew that I couldn’t keep 
my tears back any longer, and that I was going to make a 
ridiculous spectacle of myself, I was so humiliated and 
enraged that I said, without really understanding what I 
was saying, “ Oh, I hate you, you make me hate you.” 

He started and stood still ; and though I was half blind 
with tears by this time, I could see that he winced, and 
that his face grew pale, and that his eyes filled with pain 
and terror, as if I had cut him with a knife. He looked 
at me in a sort of blank anguish for a moment ; and then 
he repeated, faltering, “You hate me ? Good God ! 
What — what have I done to make you hate me ? ” 

“ Oh, no, no,” I moaned, in sudden remorse and alarm. 
“ Don’t look at me like that. No, no, I don’t mean that. 
I don’t mean that I hate you. Only, why — why do you. 
. . . Oh, can’t you let me be ? ” 

“ Oh, heavens, heavens ! ” he cried, wildly. “ What 
have I done? You are crying. You are miserable. 
What have I done ? What have I said ? I must have 
done something dreadful, to make you cry.” 

“ No, no, no,” I sobbed. “ You haven’t done anything. 
Only, I — I am such a — oh, I don’t know.” 

I put out my hand, instinctively, to silence him, to 
entreat him to let me alone. But he must have mis- 
understood. He seized hold of it, and kept it in his. 

“ If you would only speak, if you would only tell me,” 
he said, and pressed my hand so hard that it hurt. 

“ Let go, let go,” I begged, pulling it away. 

“ Is it — is it because of what I said, of what I did, last 
night ? ” he asked, all at once. “ Because, if it is, I can 
tell you — of course I ought not to tell you, I have no 
right to say it to you — only you had better know the 


88 


MEA CULPA. 


truth, rather than imagine things that are not true — 
what I did last night I couldn’t help doing, because — oh, 
because for one moment I lost control of myself, and my 
— my love for you, Monica, my love for you — do you 
understand ? — my love for you got the better of me, and 
I couldn’t keep it in. Oh, my Love ! You know it now. 
You know I love you. Love you! Oh, but you can 
never know how much ! ” 

I thought my heart would burst, it swelled so full with 
such a deep, unutterable, aching joy. 

“ Oh, Monica ! Monica ! Oh, my Love ! ” His voice 
was like a sigh, so low, so passionate. Then he took 
hold of my hand again, and drew me toward him, very 
gently, very slowly ; and then he put his arm around my 
waist, and kissed me. It seemed as if all my life trembled 
and thrilled in the breath I drew while I felt his lips 
against mine. 


VI. 


And now there began for me a season of happiness 
greater than any that I had ever dreamed, a happiness as 
rich and as complete as it was new : the happiness that 
must come to every young girl, I suppose, into whose life 
love has just entered for the first time. Spring was deepen- 
ing into summer, the wonderful golden summer of France, 
with its wealth of sunshine and color and fragrance. It 
was as if somehow, the magic of the summer had got into 
my heart, filling it with warmth and light, and making it 
sing. 

But, of course, I could not have been happy at all, if 
he had not been happy too ; and I am sure that he was 
happy, very happy, perhaps as happy as myself: only 
. . . Only, his happiness, though it may have been as 

great as mine, was not so unalloyed. For he could not do 
what I could do : he could not forget or banish from his 
mind certain cruel and relentless facts of our position ; 
whereas to me they were, for a while at least, as insigni- 
ficant as words written in water. He could not help 
brooding upon them, and reasoning from them to their 
hateful consequences ; whereas I had a blind confidence 
that by some means or other we should be enabled to 
triumph over them in due time — a confidence that was 
simply bom of my desire. 

One Sunday afternoon we had gone to Suresnes for 
dinner, and after dinner we crossed the bridge to spend 
the twilight in the Bois. My father and Armidis were 
walking so far ahead of us that we could talk together 


90 


MEA CULPA. 


without -fear of being overheard. Julian, however, was 
morose and monosyllabic ; it was easy to see that some- 
thing was troubling him, that he had, as we say, some- 
thing on his mind. 

Then all at once he broke out with a sort of groan : 
“ It’s all wrong, all wrong. I have no right to it. I feel 
like a thief.” 

I did not know what he meant, and I was frightened. 

“ What is all wrong ? You have no right to what ? ” I 
asked. “ I do not understand.” 

“ Oh, it’s simple enough. No right to anything — to all 
this happiness, to your love. No more right to it than a 
thief has to his stolen goods.” 

“ I don’t see what you mean. No right ? Why haven’t 
you a right ? Or how is it a question of right ? You can’t 
help it, if I love you. One loves, just as one lives, willy- 
nilly. You might as well say that you have no right to 
life.” 

“ Well, I’m not so sure that I have, if it comes to that. 
But anyhow, the case is different. One can’t help loving, 
if you please ; but one can help — How shall I say it ? 
One can’t help feeling thirsty, for instance ; but one can 
very well help going into a cafe, and ordering wine, and 
drinking it, when one hasn’t the money to pay for it. 
Just as surely as people give themselves up to the enjoy- 
ment of anything that they haven’t a right to, just so 
surely must they pay for it some time in suffering. It’s a 
law of nature. I shouldn’t mind paying, so far as I’m con- 
cerned. I should consider any price cheap. But you 
. . . ! I can’t bear to think of the pain we’re storing 

up for you.” 

“ I don’t understand that,” I said. 

“ Why, do you realize what I am ? A poor devil of a 
fifth-rate painter, without a penny to his name.” 

“I dare say I’m very dense, but still I don’t under- 


JULIAN NORTH. 


91 


stand. Is love a luxury, which one can only enjoy if 
one is rich ? ” 

“ Yes, it is, emphatically. But the point is that our 
paradise is a fool’s paradise. Here . . . We love 

each other, don’t we, Monica ? That’s given ; that’s our 
starting-point. Isn’t it ? But now look, consider. Un- 
less two people who love each other can marry, their love 
must sooner or later become just an unmitigated curse. 
As the world is constituted, if it is absolutely out of the 
question for them to get married, if there is no pros- 
pect of their ever being able to marry, their love is a 
curse, an agony. Well, what am I ? A beggar, literally 
a beggar, without a sou in the world, without even an 
honest trade whereby to earn a sou.” 

“ An honest trade indeed ! You have your Art.” 

“ Art ? Unless a miracle should happen, it will be 
years and years before I can even earn bread and cheese 
by my art. Perhaps never. A painter ! Why, if I were 
a liouse-painter, a sign-painter, our outlook would be 
more hopeful. Anyhow, it reduces itself to this : we love 
each other, and there’s no likelihood of our ever being 
able to marry. Therefore, in letting you know that I love 
you, in accepting your love, in allowing you to care any- 
thing at all for me, I’m doing you an injustice of the 
worst kind, a cowardly, dishonorable injustice. That’s 
the plain English of it.” 

“ In the first place,” I replied, “ you are just too con- 
ceited. Allowing me to care for you indeed ! Thank you. 
And suppose you should forbid it ? That’s very mannish. 
And, in the second place, you say : Unless a miracle 
should happen. Well, and why shouldn’t a miracle hap- 
pen? Hasn’t one miracle happened already? Wasn’t it a 
miracle that we ever came to know each other at all? 
That among the millions and millions of people in the 
world, we two should just have found each other out ? I 


92 


MEA CULPA. 


don’t believe that after God has brought us together in 
this way, He will let us be separated. I am sure that a 
miracle ivill happen, if it becomes necessary. But in the 
third place, suppose we can’t get married for the present? 
Aren’t we happy enough now ? Can’t we wait ? Oh, I don’t 
see anything to worry about. Sufficient unto the day ! ” 

“ Entre nous le passe ne valait pas le diable , Vavenir sera 
delectable , en attendant jouissons du present ” he said, quot- 
ing a favorite maxim of my father’s. “ That is all very 
well. You have nothing on your conscience. You’re 
not to blame in anyway. But I — my case is dif . . . 

different. It’s my fault. I’m the criminal. And then, 
look : the present is going to be so short. It’s now June, 
isn’t it ? And in September, or October, at the latest, 
. . . do you realize what’s got to happen then ? I’ll 

have to pack my traps, and go back to America. Then 
our fool’s paradise will show up for what it is.” 

“ I don’t see why you will have to go back to Amer- 
ica.” 

“ Why, because I shall be dead-broke. That’s slang, 
and means that I shan’t have any more money.” 

“ But you will be no worse off with empty pockets here 
in Paris, than you would be over there.” 

“ Ah, but here I can’t earn a penny, not a single penny. 
Over there, with the prestige of my four years as a Valen- 
tine Prizeman behind me, I can teach. I can probably 
earn enough to keep body and soul together, if I’m not 
particular about the quality of the bond. Why, I sup- 
pose, if I have good luck, and am industrious, I can earn 
almost as much as a day laborer — say a couple of thou- 
sand francs a year. 

“ Nonsense ! With your talent, with your training 1 
You’ll earn a great deal more. Then you will be very 
economical, you will save ; and when you’ve got a certain 
amount put by, you will come back,” 


JULIAN NORTH . 


93 


“ Ah, that shows how little you understand the con- 
ditions. Art is paid poorly enough the world over, and 
held in slight enough esteem ; but in our great and glori- 
ous Republic . . . oh ! Barring a handful of mill- 

ionaires, parvenus, ignoramuses, who have made their 
money in pork or railways, and know as much about Art 
as they know about Esoteric Buddhism, nobody thinks of 
buying pictures in our country; and ces messieurs will 
buy nothing that isn’t signed with a world-renowned 
name. In America the artist must teach, or he must 
starve ; and I Jiave never heard of anyone building up a 
fortune as a teacher. . . . But apart from that, tak- 

ing it at its best, supposing that I can come back some 
time, the separation will be pleasant, won’t it ? To be 
separated . . . who knows how long ? ” 

“ Oh, it will be dreadful, horrible. But never mind. 
I’ll wait for you ... all my life, if necessary.” 

“ Oh, what have I done to deserve such happiness ? ” he 
cried. But then his face darkened. “ That’s just the 
point. There’s just where the wrong comes in. I have 
no right to make you wait, to let you wait. What right 
have I to let you waste the very best years of your life 
waiting for me, when, if you’d never had the misfortune 
to know me — if your unlucky star hadn’t sent me across 
your path — you might have cared for somebody else, 
somebody who would have been less impossible ? ” 

“ It’s outrageous for you to talk like that. As though 
love were simply a matter of chance,” I cried. “ As 
though I could ever have cared for anyone but you. As 
though I would have given my love to the first comer ! 
I don’t see how you can suggest such a thing.” 

“ Oh, I didn’t mean that. I only meant. . . But 

there ! What’s the use of discussing it? I’m going to 
believe as you do. Sufficient unto the day is the evil 
thereof. Something will happen. I may not have to go 


94 


MEA CULPA. 


to America after all. Suppose I should sell my Salon 
picture. Of course, I might as well say, Suppose the 
moon should fall : but let’s suppose it. En attendant 
jouissons du present l ” 

Armidis seemed to have divined everything. One day 
he said to me, “If I were Julian North and Monica Bana- 
kin, do you know what I would do ? ” 

“ No. What ? ” I queried. 

“ I would throw prudence to the dogs.” 

“As usual, you speak in riddles.” 

“I do that as a tribute to your intelligence, it’s so pene- 
trating. Throw prudence to the dogs. There’s nothing 
so deadly harmful in this world as prudence. It causes 
more unhappiness annually than scandal, small-pox, and 
street-music piled together. I once knew a young man 
— this was hundreds of years ago, before you had even 
thought of being bom — a young man who loved a young 
girl, and she loved him. Strange as it may seem, hard 
as you may find it to believe, their love was just as strong 
and eager, just as burning a reality in their hearts, as 
Julian North’s and Monica Banakin’s is ; but they hadn’t 
the price of an old hat between them ; and they were pru- 
dent. So, though it hurt a good deal to do it, they said 
good-by to each other ; and presently she married another 
man, and died ; and he went off, and was miserable all 
the rest of his days ; and he realized that he had ruined 
his life and hers, and made a pitiful failure of everything, 
all because he had been so prudent ; and though he was 
never prudent again, it didn’t do any good. That first 
prudence was irrevocable ; its consequences followed him 
always.” 

I was silent. Somehow, though he spoke in a jaunty, 
half- jesting tone, what he said sent a pang into my heart. 

“ I speak to you out of the depths of my age and ex- 


JULIAN NORTH. 


95 


perience, Monica,” he went on. “ Give prudence the go- 
by. ’Tis a strained quality. Itfalleth as the ruthless 
hail from storm-clouds. It curses him that gives and him 
that takes. Eschew it. It’s for you to take the initiative. 
You see, poor youth, lie’s Anglo-Saxon. Yes, in spite of 
his Creole mother, he’s an Anglo-Saxon and a Yankee. 
Therefore he is shackled with two ridiculous inheritances : 
English common sense, and Puritan conscience. He, ac- 
cordingly, will be for prudence and morality. Copy-book 
morality, shop-keepers’ prudence. But you are Russian ; 
to you belongs the glorious privilege of being bold and 
inconsequential ; that is to say, moral in a broader and 
more human sense, and if not prudent, wise. You may be 
impulsive. It’s just as comfortable, believe me, to starve 
d deux , as it is to starve singly, separately. Go and get 
married, since marriage is the fashion, and trust to Prov- 
idence for the rest. The Lord will provide.” 

“ Yes,” I said, “ but you forget that there is my father.” 

“No, I don’t. I forget nothing. What of your father ? ” 

“Why, this. What you say about starving d deux is 
true enough ; but we’re not two, we’re three. My father 
is the third person, and we have no right to leave him out 
of our reckoning. If I were to get married, how would 
he be provided for ? You see, I have no right to get 
married, unless the man I marry will be able to support 
my father as well as myself.” 

“ Oh, dear me, what dreadful rubbish ! ” grieved Armi- 
dis, suddenly assuming his most plaintive manner. “ As 
if you couldn’t go on doing your work, earning your share 
of the provender, just as well after marriage as before it ! 
As if, though a maid may toil, a wife must simply sit still 
with folded hands while her husband does double labor ! 
Such conventionality ? Such Philistinism ! Evil com- 
munications corrupt good manners. I see, by constant 
association with your Mr. North, you're becoming a thing 


96 


MEA CULPA. 


of prudence too. There’s no telling where you’ll end. If — 
if you should turn Anglo-Saxon ! Horror ! You, whom 
I have hitherto regarded as my one sure refuge, my one 
kindred spirit, to whom I could always look for under- 
standing, for sympathy, in my follies ! Bock of ages, cleft 
for me ! ” 

“ Thank you,” I cried, laughing. Then I added in all 
gravity, “ We are in no hurry to get married, Mr. Armidis. 
We are very happy as things are at present. We are 
content to wait and hope. We are young ; we have the 
future. You know my father’s maxim : Between our- 
selves the past wasn’t worth a button, the future will be 
delightful, meanwhile let’s enjoy the present. We have 
adopted it. For my part, there’s only one thing that 
troubles me.” 

“And that is?” 

“ That we have to keep it all a secret from my father. 
The feeling that we are deceiving him, and the fear lest 
he may discover it.” 

“ Well, but what if he should discover it ? What have 
you to fear?” 

“ Oh, he would never approve of it. He would forbid 
our meeting, or seeing each other, or having anything to 
do with each other.” 

Armidis stood still before me, eying me with his quiz- 
zical, searching gaze. 

“ And do you mean to say,” he demanded, slowly, 
bearing upon each word, “ do you mean to tell me that 
if your father forbade your meeting, you would even 
dream of obeying him ? Look me in the eye, 

and answer me that.” 

“ What else would there be to do ? ” I answered. “ We 
have to live together, my father and I. It would be in- 
supportable if we had to live together in a state of dis- 
cord. He has very old-fashioned ideas about the obedi- 


JULIAN NORTH. 


97 


ence that children, and especially daughters, owe their 
parents, you know. Besides which, he is very firm. 
When he takes a stand of any kind, you could no more 
move him than you could move a mountain. If I should 
refuse to obey him in any matter of serious importance, 
he would never rest, he would never let me rest, until I 
had given in to him.” 

“ Enough ! Enough ! ” cried Armidis. “ Qa, c’est le 
comble. You are determined to be wretched ; and you 
too are firm ; and your determinations are not to be 
shaken.” 

“ But I am not wretched, I am very happy.” 

“Well, have it so if you wish. But a few months 
hence? And then for all the rest of your life! Oh, 
dear, oh, dear ! Ah, if I were you, and Paul Mikhaelo- 
vitch Banakin were my father, and I were in love with a 
young man, and the young man returned the compliment, 
and Paul Mikhaelovitch tried to interfere — do you know 
what I’d do ? I’d bring him to reason quickly enough. 
I’d starve him out. I’d strike. I’d say, ‘ Very good, my 
father : we will bow to your august desires. But I feel 
the need of a vacation. I’m not going to give any more 
music lessons, or translate any more sensation novels, or 
color any more photographs, for some time to come. 
You may pitch in and earn our living for a while.’ . . .. 

That’s what I’d say to him ; and just as soon as the boot 
began to pinch a little, he’d come round. Obedience, in- 
deed ! It’s the member of the firm who foots the little 
bills who’s entitled to demand obedience. There! I’ve 
said my say.” 

“ Yes. But I’m not up to such heroic treatment. My 
father is my father, and I love him. Besides, I trust in 
the future. I am sure it will all come right in the end. 
I don’t want to spoil everything by any rash action now.” 

“ Well, I wash my hands of you. I’ve done my best, 
7 


93 


MEA CULPA. 


and failed. Now I disclaim all responsibility. Under- 
stand that ; and don’t come and reproach me for the 
sorrows you are sowing the seeds of now, when they 
blossom in the time to be. I don’t want to croak, but 
blossom they will, and blossom they must. And some fine 
day, after your father has succeeded in separating you 
from the man of your choice, and in uniting you to the 
man of his, then you will remember the advice I’ve lav- 
ished upon you to-day ; and oh, me ! how you will repent 
having spumed it ! That’s all.” 

But I should convey an altogether false idea of the 
situation if I allowed it to be imagined that this some- 
what dismal aspect of our affair was constantly before our 
minds. On the contrary, for the most part we were able 
to forget it, and to give ourselves up unreservedly to the 
happiness of the moment. 

We saw each other every day. As the summer ad- 
vanced, a good many of my pupils left town. Then the 
time that I had formerly spent teaching at their houses, I 
would spend at home, working at my translations. To- 
ward five o’clock in the afternoon I would put aside my 
manuscripts, and Julian would come for us, and we w T ould 
dedicate the remaining hours of the day and evening to 
the gods of pleasure. It was enough for him and me that 
we were together ; what we did made very little difference 
to us. We never tired of our small daily routine; it 
never seemed humdrum or monotonous to us ; the Lux- 
embourg, the Concombre Rose, a cafe in the Boulevard St. 
Michel, then the Hotel du St. Esprit, and good-niglit. 
. . . Sometimes, though, we would vary it a little, 

by dining on the other side of the Seine, and thence be- 
taking ourselves to Armidis’s rooms, where we would have 
music and supper. Then, as I have already said, we 
would devote our Sundays and holidays to little excur- 


JULIAN NORTH. 


99 


sions into the country. We would carry our breakfast 
wutli us in a basket, and picnic in the open air. This was 
primarily for the sake of economy, though, I suspect, we 
enjoyed it far better in this way, than we should have 

done if we had taken it at a restaurant But it 

did not matter what we did, or where we went ; so long 
as we were together, within sight and hearing of each 
other, we were happy. Mere existence in each other’s 
presence was a deep sweet ecstacy. Our hearts were 
overflowing with the joy of life, the joy of life and youth 
and love. The whole outer world was transfigured for 
us ; the simplest things, the most trivial happenings, were 
invested with a sort of celestial glamour ; so that when 
I shut my eyes, and imagine myself back in that time 
now, a delicious warmth seems to pervade my senses, the 
air becomes sweet with a perfume like that of roses, I seem 
to hear vague soft music, and my heart trembles with an 
exquisite, unreasoning delight — all this with the sunny 
streets of Paris, or the green banks of the Seine, or the 
shadowy avenues of the Bois de Meudon, for a background. 

Our dissipations were always necessarily of an inex- 
pensive kind, and therefore they were apt to be, as my 
father complained, plebeian, and to smack of Bohemia. 
On the night of the 14th July, for instance, Armidis in- 
sisted upon our accompanying him to an open-air ball 
that was in progress at the Place d’ltalie. My father 
very strenuously objected, but Armidis would not hear 
him. 

“ Very good. If you’re above it, Banakin, Monica and 
I, who aren’t proud, will go without you, and Mr. North 
shall come to chaperone us. By-bye ! ” 

“ It will be low, and very likely improper,” my father 
urged. 

“ Sich be our tastes,” retorted Armidis. “ Allez . Put 
on your liat, and let us be off.” 


100 


MEA CULPA . 


My father ended by obeying him. 

It was great fun, and entirely harmless. There were 
booths at which sweetmeats and cheap ribbons and toys 
were sold ; and there were merry-go-rounds, with painted 
wooden elephants and horses, camels, and tigers, all of 
one size, where you could take a circular ride for a penny ; 
and there were mysterious-looking tents, into which vol- 
uble Merry-Andrews, in paint and motley, eloquently ex- 
horted you to enter, and hear your fortune told for a 
consideration of fifty centimes. Of course there were 
Punch and Judy shows, and of course no end of little 
soldiers and people were dancing on the pavement to the 
music of barrel-organs. 

The best fun of all, however, was Armidis himself, who 
enjoyed it like a child, and whose pink and white face 
beamed with one perpetual broad smile of beatitude. He 
bought four tin trumpets at one of the booths — which 
made a trumpet apiece for each of us — and a pocketful of 
sweets at another; and then he went about blowing his 
trumpet and munching his sweets, and was in the seventh 
heaven. He led us all into one of the tents, and had our 
fortunes told ; he engaged a chariot on one of the merry- 
go-rounds — oh, but a chariot ! of gold and ivory, if you 
please, and drawn by four terrific griffins — and kept us 
driving round and round till we were giddy. Finally he 
bundled us into a cab, and took us to the Foyot for a 
supper. . . . And from first to last he had seized 

every opportunity to pair off with my father, so that 
Julian and I could be alone together; for which kindness 
he had paid himself by shooting at us every now and 
then a knowing, confidential smile, and beginning to sing, 
softly, as if in absence of mind, “Gather ye rose-buds 
while ye may ! ” 

Oh, how happy we were, how happy ! Indescribably 
happy; impossibly happy, it seems now. When, from 


JULIAN NORTH. 


101 


thinking of those days, and forgetting the years that have 
passed since they were here, I come back to the present, 
and realize that they are gone, gone forever, gone as 
utterly as if they had never been . . . oh, my God, 

my God ! how can I live and bear it? 


VII. 


One morning in the first week of September a commis- 
sionaire brought us a note from Armidis, which read as 
follows : 

“My hated rival X . . . has sent me a box for 

this evening at the Opera Comique, where they are per- 
forming his latest atrocity. I invite you three compan- 
ions of the St. Esprit to go and endure it with me. Moral 
support ! Put on the full panoply of your abiti neri e 
decorazioni , and expect me between seven and eight. I’m 
afraid I shan’t be able to meet you at the Concombre 
y 

Rose. Bien a vous — ^.” 

That was the rubric with which he always signed his 
notes — a V superimposed upon an A, giving the effect of 
an elongated X. 

“ Oh, yes, we will go, we will go,” said my father. 
“ But what a droll fellow he is, to be sure, this Armidis ! 
He bids us put on our evening costume, which would go 
without saying, inasmuch as we are to occupy a box, 
whereas he himself — in what array will he appear, I 
should like to know ? He who, I will wager, has not a 
dress-suit to his name. I tremble with apprehension. 
They will not admit him, if he presents himself in his 
customary rags, as he is entirely capable of doing ; but 
what else does he possess to put on? ” 

“Yes, I wonder what he will wear,” I responded, rather 
absently, for I had the question of my own toilette to pre- 
occupy me. 


JULIAN NORTH. 


103 


“ I only hope,” pursued my father, “ that he will not 
contrive to cast ridicule or odium upon our whole party.” 

“ Oh, that will be all right,” said Julian, when my 
father had confided his trepidation to him. “Dress- 
suits can be hired. He’ll hire one for the occasion.” 

After dinner we assembled in our room, to wait for him. 

“ Oh, how beautiful you are looking ! What a pretty 
gown ! ” Julian had whispered to me, thereby causing me 
a flutter of pleasure and excitement. “ I never saw you 
in anything so becoming before.” 

It was the best gown I had, one that I had made my- 
self from materials purchased at the Petit St. Thomas at 
a bargain ; but it was nothing very dazzling, I can assure 
you. He had committed the extravagance of buying me 
a big bunch of roses. 

Presently there came a sharp, imperative rap-rap-rap 
at our door, which we recognized at once for Armidis’s. 

“ Entrez , entrez ,” my father and I called out in a breath. 

The door opened, and Armidis advanced into the 
room. . . . 

At sight of him, we three others first started back and 
gasped ; then for an instant we stared at him in helpless 
silence, as if petrified ; at last we broke into an uncon- 
trollable fit of laughter. 

He was arrayed in the uniform of a captain of the 
French army. 

We were overcome by a fou-rire. We laughed and 
laughed, till it seemed as if we could never stop. He 
stood still and gazed at us with a frown of injury and 
bewilderment, as who should say, “ What in the world 
has happened to you ? Have you all gone mad ? ” 

The uniform was rather worn and threadbare ; the jacket 
was whitish along the seams ; the golden shoulder-cords 
were tarnished ; here and there a button was missing ; 
and the whole affair was two or three sizes too small for 


104 


MEA CULPA. 


him, so that he looked painfully compressed and squeezed 
in ; and you were irresistibly reminded of a corpulent 
sausage crowded into a skin far, far too tight, and you 
could not help fearing that at any moment the skin 
might burst. The effect of his big feet and fat red hands 
protruding from the short, snug sleeves and trousers, was 
ludicrous enough ; but I can imagine nothing more ab- 
surdly funny than the incongruity between his pink, 
mild, infantile face, as fresh and chubby and pacific as a 
cherub’s, softened by the vast mane and beard of snow- 
white hair that surrounded it, and his martial make-up. 
And then the air of blank incomprehension, and of hurt 
and resentment, with which he waited for us to recover 
our sobriety ! 

“Well, really,” he began, with a certain querulous 
jauntiness, by and by, “when you are quite ready, I 
should be glad to learn what the joke is.” 

“Since when have *you received your commission?” 
gasped my father. 

“I’m sure, if you’re laughing at my uniform, you’re 
very foolish,” the composer said, with an accent of non- 
chalant superiority. “You can’t be so ignorant of the 
usages of Society as not to know that an officer’s uniform 
is the equivalent of a, civilian’s dress-suit. I don’t happen 
to have a dress-suit, so I wear this instead. There’s 
nothing to laugh at.” 

“ True enough, true enough. But where did you get 
it ? How did you come by it ? ” my father pursued. 

“Oh, I came by it honestly. A friend of mine, a 
captain, had outgrown it, had got too stout for if, if you 
must know the fact, and he gave it to me. I’ve only had 
it about a fortnight, and this is the first time I’ve worn it 
in public. I think it’s exceedingly becoming, though 
perhaps it might fit a little better. But the color of the 
trousers ! A perfect feast for the eye ! ” 


JULIAN NORTH. 


105 


“ Oh, as for the fit,” laughed Julian, “ it fits you like 
your skin.” 

“Yes, but I assure you it’s too small, painfully too 
small. 11 faut soiiffrir pour etre beau; and it pinches 
me cruelly. But I don’t dare to sigh, lest it should 
burst.” 

“ Well, I don’t know, I’m not a lawyer,” said my father. 
“ But I’d be willing to wager a good deal that you’re 
violating some section of the penal code by wearing it. 
If you should be arrested . . . ? ” 

“ Oh, bird of ill omen ! Don’t, don’t ! ” pleaded Armi- 
dis, becoming plaintive. “ How can you be so unfeeling ? 
To suggest such a thing ! Oh, you don’t really think 
there’s any danger, do you? Not really? Say you don’t. 
I came from the house in a fiacre , so that nobody saw me. 
I don’t w^ant to be arrested. What shall I do? ” 

“ Oh, now that you’ve gone so far, you may as well go 
to the end,” my father answered. “ Brazen it out. Put 
on your grand air, and carry it off. Of course you must 
take your chances. At the worst, it’s not a capital offence ; 
only a few years’ retirement from the world.” 

“ Oh, I see ! You’re only teasing. Cruel ! At first I 
thought you might be in earnest, and I was frightened 
. . . Well, shall we start ? . . . Mercy upon me ! 

How fine we are, with our silks and flowers and furbelows ! 
Quite killing ! ” he concluded, addressing me. 

We set out to walk to the Place St. Michel, where we 
were to take the omnibus . . . Almost the first 

persons we encountered, as we turned into the Boulevard, 
were three little soldiers, who, directly they beheld Armi- 
dis, brought their hands to their caps, in salute. 

“ Oh, misery, misery ! ” he began to grieve, as soon as 
they had passed. “ What am I to do ? If all the soldiers 
we chance to meet are going to salute me! Surely I’ll 
betray myself, my imposture will be unmasked, and per- 


106 


EA CULPA. 


haps they’ll send me to jail. How absurd of them, how 
indelicate ! To touch their caps to a man who doesn’t 
know them, who doesn’t want to know them. It’s very 
pushing and presumptuous of them, isn’t it ? ” 

“ Oh, extremely so,” said Julian, sympathetically. 

“But what shall I do?” he pursued, with eagerness. 
“It’s a complication that I never dreamed of, and I 
haven’t the remotest notion what to do. You, Monica, 
you who are practical and ready-witted and far-seeing 
and everything, tell me.” 

“Why not return their salute? ” I suggested. 

“ Oh, to be sure ! Return their salute ! Why, of 
course ! Oh, thank you so very much. Strange that I 
shouldn’t have thought of it myself, but I am so stupid 
and inefficient. Yes, yes, I’ll return their salute.” 

We passed a good many more soldiers before the even- 
ing was over, whose cap-touching Armidis graciously 
acknowledged not only by touching his, but by adding to 
that gesture a most affable smile and nod. 

After the performance he begged us to go home with 
him for supper ; but my father, who seemed to be in a 
bad humor about something, rather impatiently declined. 

On our way to the Hotel du St. Esprit my father 
scarcely spoke. This caused me a vague anxiety and dis- 
quiet, and I kept wondering what could have gone wrong 
with him. When we had said good-night to Julian, and 
were alone together in our room, I asked him. 

“ I see that something is troubling you,” I began. 
“ Will you tell me what it is ? ” 

“ What it is ? ” he repeated, looking at me with cold, 
ominous eyes. “ You ask me that ? Well, it is that my 
faith in human nature has this evening recieved a blow 
from which it will not soon recover. Do you understand? 
Or must I be more specific ? . . . Ah, you blush, 
you turn pale. I do not wonder. This evening, at one 


JULIAN NORTH. 


107 


and the same instant, I learn that my daughter has been 
deceiving me, and that a young man whom I have mis- 
taken for a gentleman, and regarded as a friend, and 
trusted accordingly, has been abusing my confidence in 
the most shameful and cowardly manner. Is that enough ? 
To be exact, in the box in the theatre, I chanced to over- 
hear something that Mr. North had the impertinence to 
whisper in your ear ; and I observed that, so far from 
resenting it, you even welcomed it with a smile. I was 
as much outraged as I was astonished.” 

He paused ; but, though every word that he had spoken 
had stung me like a lash, I could not answer. A thou- 
sand different ideas, fears, hopes, impulses, resolutions, 
went whirling through my brain in wild confusion. In a 
little while he continued. . . . 

“ Owing to the exigencies of our position, I have been 
compelled to accord to you a degree of personal freedom 
to which young unmarried women of your class are not 
accustomed. I relied upon your own appreciation of the 
circumstances, upon your honor, your self-respect, as well 
as upon your common-sense, not to take advantage of my 
enforced indulgence. But what do I find ? I find that, 
forgetting what was due to yourself, your father, your 
sex, your position, you have, like any common girl of the 
people, formed a disreputable, an impossible connection 
with a young man. A young man ? A young beggar ! 
An individual who has neither rank, nor fortune, nor 
prospects ; a Bohemian, a vagabond, an adventurer. And 
this, not only without the sanction of your father, but 
without his knowledge, secretly, covertly, a la derobee. 
His conduct in thus clandestinely paying you his ad- 
dresses, I do not need to stigmatize ; it speaks for itself. 
Of yours in accepting them, I will only say that it has 
destroyed the security and the happiness of my domestic 
life. My daughter has deceived me once in one thing : 


108 


MEA CULPA . 


liow can I avoid the inference that she has deceived me 
often in many things ? Heaven knows how far you may 
have gone ! ” 

At this I found my tongue. 

“ We have gone no farther than to confess our love to 
each other. We could not help loving each other. I 
have not meant to deceive you. I have simply held my 
tongue. There was nothing to tell, except that we loved 
each other. It would only have troubled you, and brought 
misery to us. I do not see why the happiness or the se- 
curity of your life should be affected.” 

“ Never mind, never mind. I do not care to discuss it 
with you, or to listen to your evasions and excuses. You 
may hold your opinion, I may hold mine. It is not a 
matter for discussion, it is a matter for action. Mr. 
North is in no position to marry. Even if he were, I 
might still have my objections to make to an alliance be- 
tween the daughter of one of the most illustrious houses 
in the noblesse of Russia, and a nameless American. But 
he is not, and that is final. It is therefore incumbent 
upon me, as your father, to forbid you to have anything 
further to do with him. You must from this time forth 
treat him as a stranger. I demand from you a promise of 
obedience. If you refuse to promise, I shall take meas- 
ures accordingly. That is all.” 

“ Of course I refuse to promise,” I cried. “ You have 
no right to treat me like this — to try to deprive me of the 
only real happiness that has ever come into my life. Do 
you wish me to be nothing but a slave, a machine ? Am 
I entitled to none of the ordinary experiences of life ? 
Why should you begrudge me my one little joy? Isn’t 
my life gloomy enough, narrow enough, hard enough al- 
ready ? Don’t I do my duty by you to the best of my 
powers ? Oh, it is too unjust, too cruel ! ” 

I was beside myself with pain and anger ; therefore I 


JULIAN NORTH. 


109 


spoke not very coherently, and I said things that I ought 
never to have said to my father. 

“ I will have your obedience in this matter, whatever 
it may cost me,” he retorted, hotly. “You are of full age ; 
so I cannot shut you up in a convent, as I might do if 
you were still a minor. But there are moral measures of 
restraint that I can take, which will be effectual enough. 
This is a case where the ends will justify the means. 
She would betroth herself to a pauper , pardieu ! No, no; 
ga ne se fait pas dans noire famille . . . . The only 

real happiness that has ever come into your life, do you 
say? It is intolerable, your saying such a thing to me, 
your father, a man who has lived for nothing but your 
happiness ever since you were born. It is your true, 
your ultimate happiness which I am trying to assure to 
you now, but which you, in the blindness of this impos- 
sible infatuation, would destroy. . . . Now you may 

leave me. I have nothing more to say to you. Go to 
bed.” 

But when, next morning, after a most miserable, sleep- 
less night, I came down-stairs to his room, I was sur- 
prised to be greeted by him with as much kindness and 
affection as if we had parted on the best of terms. 

“ Good-morning, my dear,” he said. “ Come and kiss 
me. There ! You have been crying. Your eyes are all 
red and swollen. You have lain awake all night? So 
have I. I have been thinking it over, thinking it over ; 
and I have concluded that I was hasty in the attitude I 
took last evening. You see, the discovery had been so 
sudden ; I hadn’t had leisure in which to get over the shock 
it caused me. And I was hurt at the thought that you 
had concealed it from me. It wounded me to think that 
you had not been more frank and open with me. . . . 

However, no more of that. Let bygones be bygones. 


110 


MEA CULPA. 


I’ve had plenty of time to consider it during the night, 
and I have determined to make the best of it. I am will- 
ing to concede as much as with any sort of propriety I 
can, provided that you and he, on your side, will agree to 
behave like reasonable and mature human beings, and not 
like children. But first of all I want you to examine 
yourself, and tell me whether you are entirely sure of 
your own mind. At your age one is very apt to mistake 
a passing caprice or fancy for a genuine passion. For in- 
stance, suppose that there were no impediments of any 
kind to a marriage between you, are you quite sure that 
you would be willing to become his wife ? ” 

What I answered to all this I do not need to repeat. 
My father had suddenly lifted me out of the deepest quag- 
mire of the Slough of Despond into the seventh circle of 
delight. I was not chary of my expressions of gratitude 
and affection ; I felt as though I could never make due 
amends for my injurious speeches of the night before. 
He kept protesting, with an air of embarrassment, 
“There, there ! That will do. Let bygones be bygones. 
Say no more about it.” At last he rang the bell, and 
when the gargon had responded to it, “Will you rap at 
the door of Mr. North,” my father asked, “ and if he be 
in, convey to him my compliments, and the request that 
he will favor me with a visit before he leaves the house ? ” 

A minute or two later Julian entered the room. 

My father made him his most ceremonious bow, and 
begged him to be seated. 

Then, “ Since I saw you last evening, Mr. North,” he 
said, “ my daughter has confided to me the fact that you 
and she have formed an attachment for each other. You 
are a very young man, and I am getting to be very old. I 
hope, therefore, you will not take it amiss if I say to you, 
without rancor, as a father might speak to a son — en bon 
papa , in fine — that I should have been better pleased if 


JULIAN NORTH. 


Ill 


you had followed the usages of the world a little more 
closely, and opened your mind to me, before opening your 
heart to her. I will not deny that I have felt a little hurt 
at your lack of frankness.” 

“ The reason for my not speaking to you, Mr. Banakin,” 
Julian rejoined, “ was simply that I had nothing to say. 
There was no use telling you that I loved your daughter, 
unless I could ask you to consent to our marrying, or, at 
least, becoming engaged. But that I couldn’t do, because, 
as you know, I’m disgustingly poor. I had never meant 
to tell her that I loved her, either. I realized perfectly 
well that I had no manner of right to do so. I ought to 
have gone away — cleared out, and taken my secret with 
me. But I hadn’t the — well, then — the — the grit. One 
evening we were talking together, and it came out before 
I knew it. I admit that it was all wrong.” 

“ Oh, I don’t know ; I don’t know that I should judge 
it quite so harshly as that,” my father said. “ It was un- 
fortunate, certainly, that in the actual state of our circum- 
stances, yours and mine, she and you should have come to 
care for each other ; but I do not know that you can be 
blamed especially for making a clean breast of it, when 
once the mischief was done. Human nature must be 
allowed for ; and we all know that secrets of that sort are 
hard to keep. However, we will not dwell on that aspect 
of the affair. Let bygones be bygones. What we ought 
to consider now, in a spirit of mutual friendliness, are the 
practical difficulties, the material obstacles, that it pre- 
sents. You and Monica love each other, but you are in 
no position to get married. What, then, is to be done ? ” 
“ It is very good of you to take it in this way. What is 
to be done ? Of course there’s only one thing for me to 
do — pack up and leave. Go home to America. That’s 
not very pleasant, but it can’t be helped. It’s been the 
only thing for me to do, the inevitable thing, from the be- 


112 


MEA CULPA. 


ginning. My four years are up ; my money is all spent ; I 
have barely enough left now to pay my passage to New York. 
It’s pretty hard to admit, but it’s desperately certain — I 
must leave Paris, and go to America. When I get there 
I’ll . . . I’ll seek my fortune. I’ll set to work, and 

try to haul myself out of my hole. I’ll try to make a po- 
sition and an income for myself. If I succeed, I’ll come 
back here, and if she still cares for me, ask you for Monica’s 
hand with a clear conscience. If I fail . . . well, 

God have mercy on me.” 

My father rose, and held out his hand to Julian. 

“You speak like a man of sense, courage, and honesty,” 
he said. “ Of your own accord you have suggested pre- 
cisely the course that I was going to propose to you. . . 

I trust that you, my daughter, perceive with us that this 
is the only wise and promising step that can be taken.” 

“ Oh, I suppose it’s wise” I assented. And it seemed 
as if I could hardly pronounce the words, for the great 
aching lump that filled my throat. “ Yes, I suppose it’s 
wise, but that does not make it any less terrible, any 
easier to bear.” 

“ Hard to bear you will unquestionably find it, both of 
you,” my father went on. “ But life is made up for the 
most part of things that are hard to bear. We may none 
of us hope to escape them ; the most we can do is to 
make the best of them, accepting them, resignedly, rever- 
ently, as a part of the mysterious discipline that an in- 
scrutable Providence has imposed upon us. But hard as 
it seems, it is the only means possible to your eventual 
happiness. The longer Mr. North lingers here in Paris, 
the longer must his ultimate success be delayed. The 
sooner he leaves and begins his career, the sooner will he 
be able to come back. . . . Yes, I will permit you to 

write to each other, with certain stipulations. You must 
not write oftener than once a month, and the letters must 


JULIAN NORTH. 


113 


all be of a tone simply friendly, such as I may read. Un- 
til you are actually betrothed, which will not be, of course, 
until your circumstances are more flourishing than at 
present, I cannot sanction a correspondence of a more in- 
timate character. . . . Now that is all settled. There 
is nothing further to determine, except the date of your 
departure.” 

“ Oh, if the wrench has got to come, there’s no use put- 
ting it off, I suppose,” said Julian, in a dull, dry voice. 
“ It will hurt just as much at one time as at another. I’ll 
. . . I’ll sail . . . next Saturday.” 

I shall never forget the face he turned upon me as he 
spoke those words ; it is before me now as vividly as it 
was then ; so pale, so pale, with lips drawn in the ghost 
of a smile, and eyes that burned with anguish, and hope- 
lessness, and a sort of dumb appeal. For me, the cold- 
ness of death entered into my heart. It was as if a skele- 
ton hand gripped it, so that each pulsation sent a wave of 
pain throughout my body. 

He left me on Friday, taking the train for Rotterdam, 
whence he was to sail. 

8 



PART III 


PRINCE LEONTI CHEFF. 





■ D I g| ^ g £ a gj Kj | l 



I. 


One morning in June, 1885, my father looked up from 
a newspaper that he had been reading, and said to me, 
“ You remember my old friend Leonticheff, Gregory 
Ivanovitch Leonticheff, do you not, Monica ? ” 

“Prince Leonticheff? Oh, yes, I remember him,” I 
answered, listlessly. 

“You were quite a child when he died. That was in 
seventy-four. You were about thirteen years old. . . . 
And his son, Gabriel, do you remember him ? ” 

To this I said No ; I could not remember Prince 
Leonticheff ’s son. 

“ Gregory Ivanovitch, himself a prince of the Empire, 
and one of the richest noblemen in Europe, made what his 
friends considered rather a misalliance. He married an 
Englishwoman, a sister of Sir Alfonso Luckstone, an im- 
mensely wealthy banker, reputed to be of Jewish extrac- 
tion, but a convert to Christianity. She was a vulgar, 
loud-voiced creature, whom, for my part, I could never 
endure. Their son, Gabriel Gregoreivitch, was educated 
in England, at Eton, and then at Oxford. It is pos- 
sible that you never saw him, though he used to come 
home for his holidays. He is a few years your senior, 
perhaps now eight or nine and twenty. Yet already he 
has contrived to win distinction in two countries; in 
England as the author of several clever novels, and in 
Russia as one of the few subjects honored by the per- 
sonal friendship of the Emperor. He is moreover enor- 
mously rich. For, besides the vast estates that came to 
him in Russia from his father, his mother left a very 


118 


MBA CULPA. 


large personal fortune in the English funds. He owns 
one of the handsomest mansions in London, Salchester 
House, in Park Lane, described as nothing less than a 
palace; and he has a fine country-seat, not far from 
London, on the banks of the Thames, called Argelby 
Court. ... I am reminded of all this by a paragraph in 
Figaro , from which I learn that he is in Paris at the 
Grand HoteL I think I will call upon him. It is of 
course a slender chance, but if I could interest him in 
my affair, it would be to gain it. A word from him to 
the Emperor would be invaluable. He cannot have for- 
gotten the close intimacy that existed between me and 
his lamented father. Perhaps for the sake of that he 
will wish to serve me.” 

So in the afternoon, having dressed himself with even 
more scrupulous care than usual, my father went off, to 
leave his card upon the young Prince Leonticheff, at the 
Grand Hotel. 

While he was away, Armidis came. 

The friendship between Armidis and myself had deep- 
ened and ripened a good deal during the last year and a 
half, and it had gained a good deal in seriousness. That 
year and a half had been desolate and dreary enough for 
me ; but it must have been drearier and more desolate 
still, except for Armidis’s constant gentle sympathy and 
comradeship. Especially during the last five months ! 
For more than five months I had not a line or word from 
Julian. In the alternating terror and despair that his 
silence caused me, I believe I should have gone mad, if 
it had not been for Armidis. Not that he did anything 
or said anything to make the silence less cruel or less 
ominous ; nobody save Julian himself could have said or 
done anything to that effect ; but somehow I felt less 
utterly cast do™ and forsaken, because of the tender 


PRINCE LEONTICHEFF. 


119 


friendship and affection that Armidis in his whole bear- 
ing toward me implied, rather than expressed by word 
of mouth. 

Was my lover dead ? Or — had he forgotten me ? 

“ Ah, alone ? Alone ? ” cried Armidis, gayly, as he en- 
tered the room ; and I saw that he was in one of his 
jaunty debonnaire moods to-day. “ Where is the Lily ? 
Wherefore has he deserted you ? ” 

I explained the reason of my father’s absence. 

“ Soho ! A prince ! Gracious goodness me ! How 
swell we are, leaving our cards on Anglo-Russian princes ! 
And Prince Leonticheff at that ! Oh, yes, I’ve read one 
or two of his novels. Yes, they’re unquestionably clever. 
But prince or peasant, it’s the same to me. When I’m in 
England, I’m a howling snob. In England one can’t 
afford to be anything else. But when I leave England 
for the Continent, I leave my grovelling worship for 
rank, wealth, and titles behind me. Prince or peasant, 
I’m equally thankful for the opportunity I owe him of 
finding you alone. I’ll not disguise it from you, Monica 
Paulovna, from day to day the society of your venerable 
parent becomes more and more insupportable to me. If 
I tolerate him at all, it is simply because he is an inevit- 
able concomitant to you. Every rose has its thorn. 
From day to day he shrinks visibly further into his 
armor of selfishness. If it weren’t for you, I’d just 
lavish upon him one solid thundering piece of my mind, 
and forever after cut him dead. Ouf ! ” 

“Hush!” I protested. “I cannot allow you to talk 
like that about my father. You are utterly unjust, as 
well as unkind ; and besides, I am his daughter.” 

“ You’re right, quite right. Not in calling me unjust, 
but in declaring yourself to be his daughter. Incredible 
as it may seem, you are his daughter ; and it’s all wrong 
and indelicate and in bad taste and everything for me to 


120 


MEA CULPA. 


abuse him in your presence. But then I’m not like other 
people, you know, and you must make allowances for the 
idiosyncrasies of genius. I take it all back, except the 
point. I am glad to find you alone.” 

He sat down beside me, and took my hand, and looked 
into my eyes with a smile so bright, so sweet, so touch- 
ing in its determined cheerfulness, that all at once my 
heart seemed to melt and go out to him ; and then, in- 
voluntarily, before I knew what I was doing, I began to 
cry. 

He patted my cheek and stroked my hair with his 
hand ; and very softly he said, “ That is right, dear. 
Cry, cry. ... It will do you good.” 

“ Oh, he’s dead,” I sobbed, wildly. “ I’m sure he’s dead. 
Or else he has forgotten all about me. Oh, I can’t bear 
it, I can’t bear it. Oh, what shall I do ? ” 

“ There — there — there,” Armidis murmured, as one 
does to soothe a child. “ No, no, he isn’t dead, and he 
hasn’t forgotten you. You pale women with the red hair 
. . . oh, well, not red, if that offends you ; we’ll call 

it golden . . . you pale women with the eyes and the 

hair aren’t the sort that men forget. You may feel easy 
in your mind so far as that’s concerned. In the whole 
length and breadth of his horrid old American continent 
you need fear no rival I don’t mean that you’re so 
handsome, you know ; don’t delude yourself ; but you’re 
so peculiar-looking. Unkind but honest; I was ever 
thus, a plain, blunt man.” 

He paused and laughed, and then he went on. . . . 

“ The trouble isn’t that he’s dead or oblivious ; no, no. 
If you were not the daughter of Paul Mikhaelovitch Bana- 
kin — oh, why do you Russians have such tiresome names ? 
— if you were not the daughter of your father, and if 
therefore it would not be improper to the last degree for 
me to. do so, I should tell you that I have a private suspi- 


PRINCE LEON TI CIIEFF. 


121 


cion in the secret places of my own consciousness to the 
effect that he, the said P. M. B., is at the bottom of the 
whole mystery. I should say that I powerfully suspect 
him of having intercepted Mr. North’s letters. He found 
that the affair between you two young people was pro- 
longing itself far, far beyond anything that he had fore- 
seen when he bundled Mr. North off to his native land ; 
and he said to himself that the time had come for him to 
step in and stop it. Then, like the practical spirit that he 
is, he proceeded to put his resolution in operation by 
pocketing Mr. North’s epistles. I should say all this to 
you, if the gentleman in question were not your father. 
But by an unfortunate combination of circumstances 
over which I have no control, he is your father. There- 
fore I say nothing of the kind ; but I will call your at- 
tention to another theory that perhaps interprets the 
event equally well.” 

He paused again, this time to light a cigarette. After 
he had sent several voluminous clouds of smoke curling 
up toward the ceiling, he resumed. . . . 

“ No, our friend Julian is neither dead nor oblivious, 
my dear ; but — he is foolish and conscientious. He 
doesn’t get on so rapidly as in the ardor and ignorance of 
his youth he had hoped to do. He finds that what our 
French neighbors call the strig-for-lif isn’t the playful 
little pastime that he had supposed it would be, but on 
the contrary a singularly slow, up-hill, serious piece of 
business. He begins to see that instead of weeks and 
months, it’s likely to be years and years before he can 
come back, a capitalist, to claim your hand . . . just 

what your dear delightful papa saw from the outset, and 
which accounted for his sudden and excessive amiability 
in getting North shipped for the wilderness. Finally the 
foolish and conscientious young fellow has said to him- 
self, ‘What right have I, who am I, to keep that girl 


122 


MEA CULPA. 


with the eyes and the hair waiting and pining for me all 
these years, and wasting her youth over my memory ? It 
isn’t fair. No, no. I must put a period to it. I mustn’t 
write to her any more, or remind her of my existence any 
more. I must efface myself, and give her a chance to for- 
get me. Then if I ever do succeed, then I can go back, 
and, if the field is still free, try to win her once again.’ 

. . . That is what he says to himself, and that’s the 

reason for his present silence — always assuming that he 
really is silent, and that no wicked fairy is purloining his 
letters. I understand all this, because once upon a time I 
was Anglo-Saxon myself. By and by he’ll realize how 
foolish he is. He’ll realize that it’s perfectly preposter- 
ous to put things off till he’s in receipt of a regular in- 
come. Then one fine day, he’ll turn up here in Paris, and 
we’ll have a Slavo-Yankee wedding, and we’ll all be happy 
— except possibly Paul M. Banakin, and he’ll have to 
make the best of it.” 

Oh, no, no, no ! I had thought of all this myself. 
There was no possible explanation of Julian’s silence that 
I had not thought of. In the long miserable days and 
weeks of waiting, fearing, hoping, brooding, I had had 
ample time to think, and I had thought of little else. 
Every imaginable conjecture, every imaginable suspicion, 
had passed through my mind. But by degrees I had lost 
my hold upon all of them, save these two : that he had 
died, or that he did not love me any more. I was sure my 
father had not purloined his letters ; he would be incap- 
able of such cruelty, and doubly incapable of stooping to 
a conspiracy with the servants of the hotel, which would 
be essential to the success of any such design. Yet, 
even that suspicion, unworthy as it was, had occurred to 
. . . No, all that Armidis could say was powerless to 

comfort me, or to give me any new ground for hope : 
but the deep sweet kindness that shone from his eyes, 


PRINCE LEONTICHEFF. 


123 


and vibrated in Iris voice, made my heart grow big with 
gratitude and affection. 

“ Meantime,” he continued, after a little while, “ we are 
getting a good deal of experience. We are learning how 
true it is that hope deferred maketh the heart sick, and 
we are asking ourselves that old, old question, Cui bono ? 
What’s the use ? It’s all very bitter and discouraging ; 
but it’s the sort of experience that sooner or later, in one 
form or another, must come to every man and woman. If 
it comes to us a little sooner, instead of a little later — 
why, so we’ll get to the other end of it sooner, and come 
out again at the bright side. It’s one of the dismal tun- 
nels through which the way of life is laid. No one can 
hope to avoid it. . . . When I was a young man, in 

England, years and years ago, I knew a young girl. . . . 

But there! Details are nothing to the point. I’ll not 
tire you with the story. Some time, though, when you 
are at my shop, remind me of it, and I will show you 
something.” 

“ The story won’t tire me, I promise you. Tell it to 
me,” I pleaded. “Tell me now.” 

“Unless my ears deceive me,” he returned, “I hear the 
step of Paul the son of Michael on the stairs. Yes, and 
his voice. He’s not alone. There’s some one with him. 
Who ? Not, surely not, his Anglo-Russian Prince. Fancy 
a prince in the Hotel du St. Esprit ! But who then ? 
Who else? ” 

Suddenly, and without any sort of reason, my heart 
began to palpitate . . . Gould it be . . . ? Oh, 

no, there was no earthly chance of that : and yet the mere 
fancy, absurd, impossible, as it was, taking shape in my 
imagination, made my body tremble, and I could hardly 
get my breath. I put out my hand, and grasped Armi- 
dis’s arm. 

“ Why, mercy upon me, we’re all in a tremor ! ” he. ex- 


124 


MEA CULPA. 


claimed. “ Oh, you mustn’t let yourself hope impossible 
things, you know.” 

“Oh, no, I don’t hope anything,” I said. “I know it’s 
quite impossible. It’s only because I am so weak,” 

Then my father came into the room. A single glance 
sufficed to show me that he was in a state of great excite- 
ment, of elation. He was accompanied by a young 
man. . . . 

“Monica, my daughter,” he began, summoning me. 
Then, “Prince, permit me, permit me ... I have 
the honor to present to your Serene Highness my daugh- 
ter, Monica Paulovna Banakin.” 

After which, perceiving Armidis, “ Also, if you will 
allow me, I beg to present our friend Monsieur Victor 
Armidis, the composer.” 


II. 


I must endeavor to erase from my mind all that I have 
since learned of the character of Prince Leonticheff, to- 
gether with all that long habit has since taught me to see 
in his appearance, and to set down here, as faithfully as 
possible, the first impression that I obtained of him. 

I beheld, then, in the person to whom my father, with 
so much nervous deference, presented me, a tall and rather 
fat young mail, of slouching carriage, and very loosely 
built, so that his limbs seemed to hang upon him with a 
certain flabby insecurity, and the effect of his body was 
gelatinous. He was dressed with striking and elaborate 
carelessness — in a velvet jacket and waistcoat, and a dove- 
colored flannel shirt, while his necktie was of a flame-red 
India silk, fastened in a sailor’s knot. His dusty brown 
hair, thin on the crown of his head to the verge of bald- 
ness, was cropped as close as a soldier’s or a convict’s, so 
that everywhere the bluish white of his scalp was visible. 
His skin was florid and coarse-grained, as if it had been 
exposed a good deal to the weather. His face was fleshy, 
and the lower part of it heavy, merging into a short fat 
neck through the medium of an incipient double chin. 
His mouth, shaded by a copious mustache, was unduly 
long, the lips being thick and loose ; his nose was short, 
square, and slightly turned up at the end. Thus far he 
was undeniably vulgar-looking and uncouth ; but his fore- 
head was broad and white and finely modelled, and his 
eyes, though set too far in, and not very big, were blue 
and pellucid, and full of good-nature and intelligence. 


326 


ME A CULPA : 


The general effect of the young man was remote from 
princely. “ A Russian bear,” I thought to myself. . . 

“ An indolent, easy-going, contented fellow, the son or the 
grandson of peasants, a little slow, not a little rough per- 
haps, but by no means a fool, and above all things good- 
natured,” is probably the guess one would have made of 
him. ... I must not forget to mention his hands, 
which, of all his attributes, were perhaps the most un- 
princely, being short, blunt-fingered, hirsute, and fiery red, 
like the hands of a commis-voyageur. 

One of these hands he closed upon one of mine ; and said 
in a voice that was unresonant and throaty, but soft, caress- 
ing, almost fatherly — speaking slowly, languidly, with an 
exceedingly friendly, soothing, ingratiating inflexion, smil- 
ing into my eyes, and keeping possession of my hand un- 
til the end of his speech — “ I am very glad to meet you 
again,” he said in English, pronouncing that language not 
in the least like a foreigner, nor yet like an Englishman, 
but with an accent quite peculiar to himself, whereby he 
seemed to fatten and round out the sounds. “You don’t 
remember me, but I have never forgotten you. I used to 
catch a glimpse of you now and then when you were a little 
mite of a girl, and I was a great, gawky boy home from 
school. You were the prettiest little girl I knew, and 
you made a wonderful impression on me. I think we are 
going to be friends. We must carry on the tradition of 
our families. Our fathers were friends, and so were our 
grandfathers. To tell you the truth, I begin to like you 
already.” 

His bearing, as he said all this, was one of exceeding 
good nature, of pleasant satisfaction with himself and 
everybody else, and of a comfortable, homely frankness, 
which, though comical, was not unprepossessing. 

With his last word he gave my hand a squeeze, re- 
leased it, and proffered his own to Armidis, remarking, in 


PRINCE LEON TI CIIEFF. 


127 


the same slow, caressing drawl, “ Well ! This is an unex- 
pected pleasure. I’ve heard about you, Mr. Victor Ar- 
midis, and wanted to know you, any time these ten 
years. I suppose, between ourselves, that I’m one of 
the two or three most intelligent and most enthusiastic 
admirers that you can number. In my opinion you’ve 
done some of the prettiest little things in the way of lyric 
music that this century can show. Why, some of your 
songs I wouldn’t hesitate to compare to Schubert’s. I’m 
glad to press your hand. I believe we are going to like 
each other.” 

“Oh, thank you so much,” returned Armidis, airily. 
“You quite cheer me. I’m so pleased to learn that my 
little things have met with your approval.” 

Armidis’s querulous irony was plain to see, but the 
Prince apparently took what he said at the foot of the 
letter. 

“ Yes, I’m one of your enthusiastic admirers,” he reit- 
erated. “ And I’ve given you a puff in “ Hilary’s Eosary ” 
that will make your fortune for you. You’ve seen it, of 
course. No ? You haven’t ? What ! Why, it’s run- 
ning as a serial through Macnaffen's Magazine. I’ve 
quoted a verse from a song of yours, and I’ve described 
the melody as one of the nicest and most original little 
things in modern music. You must get it. It will make 
you the talk of the day wherever English is read. 
“Hilary’s Rosary ! ” Why, it’s one of the two or three”— 
he dropped his voice to a key of confidential intimacy, 
and spoke more slowly than ever, bearing impressively 
upon each word — “it’s one of the two or three first-rate 
novels that have been done in the English language. 
It deals with Irish patriotism ; and apart from its interest 
as fiction, it contains more authentic information about 
Ireland than any other dozen books put together. And 
then, the plot! You never saw anything prettier. And 


128 


MEA CULPA. 


the characters. . . . ! And the workmanship, the style 

. . . ! Why, my friend ” — he patted Armidis gently 

upon the shoulder, to lend emphasis to his words — “ my 
friend, when the serial publication of “ Hilary’s Rosary ” 
is finished, and the book comes out in three volumes, the 
people, the People are going to rise up and greet it as 
the best thing since Harry Fielding.” 

He made this surprising statement with perfect gravity, 
and not a touch of embarrassment or misplaced humility. 
He recommended his own novel with the same serene, 
impersonal earnestness, the same quiet, confidential as- 
surance, that he might have employed in advising us 
to read one of the acknowledged masterpieces of Tolstoi 
or Turgueneff. 

This struck me as strange at the time ; his speech 
lacked verisimilitude, and I almost mistrusted my ears ; 
but before long I came to understand it. Prince Leon- 
ticheff was a clever, in some respects even an able man ; 
upon certain subjects — for example, Irish history and 
Anglo-Irish politics — he was really profoundly well-in- 
formed; he could write novels that enjoyed a great vogue 
in England, were pirated in America, and translated into 
three or four foreign tongues ; he was a high contracting 
party in the world of finance, being the power behind the 
sign in the great international banking-house of Luck- 
stone Brothers ; and with all the rest he had somehow 
known how to acquire the personal friendship and confi- 
dence of the most suspicious monarch in Europe ; surely 
he must have been a man of remarkable abilities. Yet, 
as I soon came to realize, he had not one scintilla of the 
sense of humor! Not the first meagre rudiment of it. 
In consequence, he was enabled to give himself up with 
unreserve to that tendency innate in every individual con- 
sciousness (which a sense of humor — that is to say, a 
sense of proportion and of congruity— can alone correct), 


PRINCE LEONTWHEFF. 


129 


to regard itself as the centre of the Universe, and as the 
biggest, the most vital, the most important Fact. The 
results of this absence of humor upon Prince Leonticheff s 
speech and conduct were often queer; sometimes they 
were appalling. 

“ Now,” he went on, turning to me, “I have come over 
here with your good father, to take you off to dinner with 
me. First we go for a drive, a little spin about the Bois, 
and that sort of thing, to whet our appetites; then we 
dine at the Ambassadeurs, where I have engaged a priv- 
ate room with a balcony. Your father tells me that you’ve 
lived five or six years here in Paris, without once dining 
at the Ambassadeurs. He thought it wouldn’t be proper. 
Why, bless your soul, you just lower your veil as you pass 
in and out ; and who’s the wiser ? I’ve — this is between 
ourselves — I’ve dined some of the first ladies of Europe 

at the Ambassadeurs ; yes, the Princess , and the 

Countess of , and Lady ; and they’ve come away 

delighted. Now go put on your hat. My trap is waiting 
at the door ... Of course, you are with us,” he added, 
nodding to Armidis. “ I want to hear you talk. People 
have described you to me as one of the wittiest men of 
your generation. I want to see for myself whether you 
deserve your reputation.” 

“ Oh, really ? Do people speak so kindly of me ? Oh, 
how nice ? ” murmured Armidis, with a smile that was not 
devoid of malice. “ Oh, yes, thank you, I’m with you. 
People have never described you to me at all, but al- 
ready I begin to perceive that you are immensely un- 
usual and curious. I shall be quite charmed.” 

The trap that we found waiting at the door, in charge 
of two gigantic powdered footmen, gorgeously liveried in 
buff and gold and scarlet, was an odd affair. The Prince 
directed our attention to its peculiarities, explaining, “It’s 
9 


130 


MEA CULPA. 


a little thing of my own invention. One of the most re- 
markable facts about me is that I have a strongly devel- 
oped genius for mechanics. I made the model for it with 
my own ten fingers, and then had it built under my su- 
pervision.” 

Its peculiarity consisted in its having only one seat, 
.which, however, was ample to accommodate five people, 
being curved like a horse-shoe.” 

“ It is the application of the amphitheatrical idea to a 
carriage,” said the inventor. “ It’s like the stern-sheets of 
a boat. You see I sit here in the middle, where the skip- 
per of the boat would sit, only, instead of a tiller I hold 
the reins. Then my guests distribute themselves to my 
right and left. The advantage is that we all face one an- 
other, and can talk together, and yet no one has to sit 
with his back to the horses.” 

The body of the vehicle was painted black, with an im- 
mense, flamboyant coat-of-arms and coronet emblazoned on 
it ; the wheels were crimson. It was drawn by three su- 
perb white horses, one leader, and two wheelers abreast ; 
and there was a foot-board behind for the flunkies. A 
decidedly conspicuous equipage ; and numberless were 
the people who turned to stare at us, as we went dashing 
through the Boulevard St. Germain, across the Pont and 
Place de la Concorde, and up the Avenue des Champs 
Elysees. 

Though his horses were spirited, and demanded a good 
deal of management, the Prince, who seemed to be a skil- 
ful driver, talked incessantly. He talked exclusively 
about himself, and always in his slow, simple, good- 
natured way. 

“I came here to Paris incog.,” he informed us. “I’ve 
got a nice little house of my own in the Avenue Malakoff, 
as I suppose you know ; but I went to the Grand Hotel, 
and gave my name as George Lyons. It was no go, 


PRINCE LEONTICHEFF. 


131 


though. Somebody there recognized me, and betrayed 
me to the newspapers. I was a good deal annoyed at 
that, because the business that brings me here is of a 
very secret nature, and I can’t afford to let it be known 
that I’m in it. Just between ourselves, I’ll say that there’s 
an important newspaper for sale, and that I’m thinking of 
buying it. Not in my own name, no, no. But I wanted 
to look into its affairs, and if I concluded it was worth 
while, I’d buy it through a dummy. To say nothing of 
its usefulness, I know few things more amusing than to 
control a newspaper. I suppose you know who owns the 
London Beacon? Prince Gigi, my friends.” 

“ Gigi . . . ? ” repeated my father, interrogatively. 

“ Yes. Didn’t you know? That’s my nick-name : 
Gigi — G. G. — Gabriel Gregoreivitch. Good, isn’t it ? 

. . . But as I was ^saying, when you interrupted me, 

there’s a law of compensations; and when I knew the 
murder was out, I made up my mind to stay, and to go 
in for some fun. Oh, I know how to amuse myself in 
Paris. . . . Besides, if it hadn’t been for those annoy- 

ing little paragraphs in the newspapers, I shouldn’t have 
had the pleasure of meeting you. You only got hold of 
it in this morning’s Figaro ; but the first of the series 
appeared in the Petit Journal more than a week ago. 

. . I passed the winter at St. Petersburg, which 

was very cold and gay. Then at Easter I went on to 
London, where I’ve been stopping ever since. I suppose 
you know I own the nicest house in London, Salchester 
House, in Park Lane. I bought it about five years ago, 
after the death of the last of the Lords Salchester. It’s 
big, and yet it’s pretty and comfortable, and I like it. 
But there’s nothing under the sun that bores me like 
a London season ; the people are so methodical, and 
business-like, and conscientious in their dissipations. 
A.nd yet in one way it amuses me a good deal. I do 


132 


MEA CULPA. 


enjoy seeing yonr steady-going English prigs, who in 
their secret hearts regard me very much as if I were the 
devil himself ; I do enjoy seeing them swallow their pru- 
dery and pocket their scruples, and pay homage to my 
rank and wealth. Of course there’s the fast set ; but that’s 
different; they imitate me; but I’m speaking of your 

steady-going, highly moral people, like the S s, and 

the D s. They never got over the shock my famous 

little escapade at Oxford caused them; and they don’t 
like my attitude toward the Irish Question; and they 
think, because I’m bluff and hearty and condescending in 
my manners, that I’m vulgar and lacking in dignity ; and 
my reputation as a gambler sends cold shivers down their 
spines. Yet I’m a Serene Highness, you know, and a 
Prince of the Russian Empire, and so they throw their 
houses open to me, and their daughters at my head. It’s 
interesting. The only people I really like in London are 
those whom I call la haute Bolieme; theatrical people, 
Irish Members, journalists, and that sort. And the only 

club I care for is the X . I like that club because 

the men you meet there are men, masculine, virile, not 

effete, like the members of the Y and Z , and 

not afraid of a good story, or a song, or a bottle of wine. 
Speaking of my attitude toward the Irish Question, 
that’s a funny thing about me, and a good many peo- 
ple can’t understand it : how, whereas in Russia I’m 
the most intense sort of a Reactionary, in England I do 
all I can in a quiet way to help on the cause of Irish 
Home Rule. Well, it’s the simplest and the most natural 
thing in the world. The Irish people and the Russian 
people are as different as dogs and horses; and what’s 
meat for one would be poison for the other. But it puz- 
zles the general public, and makes talk, and affords me a 
great deal of amusement. I suppose you follow my lead- 
ers in the Beacon ? No ? Oh, you must, you must. One 


PRINCE L&ONTICHEFF. 


133 


appears every Wednesday and every Saturday, when Par- 
liament is sitting, and they’re by all means the strongest 
things on the Irish Question that are printed nowadays — 
though, of course, it isn’t officially known that I write 
them ; that wouldn’t do ; might lead to international com- 
plications. I suppose I know more about the history of 
Ireland and the actual needs and conditions of the Irish, 
than any other living man. . . . Well, that brings 

me back to what I was saying of my reputation as a 
gambler. The truth of the matter is simply this. I’m a 
thoroughbred Russian ; and so there’s nothing that fasci- 
nates me like a game of chance ; roulette, dice, black-and- 
red, it doesn’t matter which. And I’m rich enough to 
afford to lose, and therefore I play. And I’d just be 
glad to hear anybody prove that it’s immoral. I’m rich 
enough to lose without grumbling, and I do lose almost 
invariably. Why, I suppose my average annual losses 
would foot up something like four or five thousand 
pounds. And I know of no other way in which the same 
amount of money could buy me the same amomit of pleas- 
ure. Therefore I want to know why I shouldn’t play? 
Are you acquainted with the beautiful little American in- 
stitution called draw-poker? Well, at poker alone, last 
month, I lost between six and seven hundred. With that 
bad luck at cards, you say, unless there’s no truth in the 
proverb, I ought to be an extraordinarily fortunate young 
man in love. Well, perhaps I am. Ho-ho-ho !” 

And the Prince suspended his discourse, to indulge in 
a long, loud, boisterous laugh. 

At the Cafe des Ambassadeurs he said, “ One of the 
funny things about me is my capacity for champagne. 
It’s practically boundless. I can drink enough cham- 
pagne at one sitting to put any other three men under 
the table, and never know it then or the next day. But 
the remarkable part of it is this; if I touch any other 


134 


MBA CULPA. 


wine, or any spirits, I’m done for quicker than powder 
and shot.” 

He also appeared to have a considerable capacity for 
food ; and between the courses of the dinner he smoked 
numberless fat cigarettes. 

When the coffee was served, he looked at his watch. 

“ Hello ! ” he cried. “ Half-past ten. And I’ve got an 
engagement for eleven which I can’t possibly neglect. 
I’ll have barely time now to run into my hotel, put on my 
dress-suit, and keep it. So I’m afraid we’ll have to break 
up. But we must meet again to-morrow. There are lots 
of things I want to say to you, and lots of questions I 
want to ask you. Besides, I want to get thoroughly well 
acquainted with you. I like you — all of you. But 
you ” — nodding to Armidis — “ you’ve disappointed me. 
You’ve scarcely opened your mouth once since I met you, 
and the reason I invited you to join us was that I wanted 
to hear you talk. Perhaps we’ll get on better to-morrow. 
You” — addressing my father — “you come and break- 
fast with me to-morrow at noon. We will talk things 
over, and make some arrangement for the evening. I 
think I’d like to dine at some little Bohemian restaurant 
in your Latin Quarter ; and afterward perhaps we’ll go 
to the play. . . . Good-night, good-night.” 

“ Well, is he not refreshing ? ” demanded my father, 
when we had parted from him. “ So simple, so natural, 
so unspoilt, so — there is but one word for it — so primi- 
tive. So unlike your conventional child of the century. 
What frankness, what bonhomie ! I feel ten years younger 
for the hours I have passed in his company. And so 
friendly ! He has promised to read the manuscript of 
my History of Russia, and I count upon him to find me a 
publisher. I have not yet spoken to him of my appeal to 
the Emperor ; but I am sure he will interest himself in it. 


PRINCE LEON TI CHEFF. 


135 


Oli, he is the most refreshing personality I have encoun- 
tered for many a long year.” 

“ He is a very surprising character, with his barbarism, 
his clumsiness, his incredible vanity, his boundless admi- 
ration for himself. His bragging was funny at first, but 
it grew rather tiresome toward the end. I think I never 
saw anybody so absolutely deficient in tact. But he’s 
apparently harmless and good-natured enough,” said I. 

“ Oh, dear, oh, dear ! ” complained Armidis. “ How 
can people show so little penetration ? He’s a great big 
lump of cheap vulgarity and piggish selfishness. A 
prince, forsooth ! A lout, a boor, a bully, a cad ! Sim- 
ple, natural, primitive ? So is a wild bear. Good-nat- 
ured ? Oh, wow- wow ! Say satisfied, complacent, if you 
please. So is any other animal, when its appetites are 
gratified and the weather’s fine. But don’t say good- 
natured. Why, consider his jaw and chin. He’s a great 
big monster of dogged, sordid, sodden egotism, as brutal 
as a rhinoceros, as cruel and remorseless as all beasts are 
in a state of nature. Why, the Pachyderm ! He’s not 
really conscious that anything or any person exists out- 
side of his own thick hide. Egotism ! The concentrated 
essence of egotism. A monumental bulk of egotism, 
slow-moving, ponderous, certain to crush every lighter 
body that may come between it and its objective point. 
Ugh ! I never saw a more repulsive brute. How can — - 
how can you tolerate him ? The Turk ! ” 

“ Mercy on me, what a tirade,” said my father. “ You 
are angry with him because he snubbed you.” 

And I must confess that I myself thought Armidis un- 
charitable and unjust. 


III. 


“ Here,” said Prince Leonticheff, addressing me, when, 
escorted by my father, he entered our room the next 
afternoon ; and he offered me a brown paper parcel, in 
size and shape resembling an octavo book. “ This good 
friend” — laying his hand upon my father’s shoulder — 
“ tells me that you translate novels into French. Well, 
then, I’m just the man you want to talk with. I’ve got a 
novel here that’s going to make a sensation throughout the 
civilized world. This is my manuscript in English. It’s 
a thing I’ve been at work on for upward of ten years ; 
ever since I was a boy ; not steadily, of course, but from 
time to time, as the inspiration seized me. I finished it 
about a month ago. It’s short, simple, unpretentious, 
and I suppose the most poetical thing in English prose. 
Yes, or German, either, for the matter of that. When I 
tell you that its better than “ Undine,” you’ll get some idea 
of how tremendously good it is. The central thought, 
the theme, is one that Goethe would have given all he 
ever wrote to have got hold of. . . . Open the parcel, 

and look at the title-page.” 

He took the parcel from my hand, and opened it. 

“ You’ve never seen my manuscript before,” he said. 
“ Isn’t it pretty? I suppose I write at once the daintiest 
and the most characteristic hand of any living author.” 

The manuscript was indeed pretty, and his hand was 
indeed dainty and full of individuality, being almost mi- 
crosopically small, yet as clear and as regular as print. 

“ A good many people think it’s like Thackeray’s,” he 


PRINCE LEONTICHEFF. 


137 


went on. “ But if you’ll take the trouble to compare the 
two, you’ll see that mine is more legible and more ele- 
gant. I write very rapidly, yet there’s never a blot, an 
erasure, or an illegibility, on a single page. Isn’t my 
title stunning ? Read it out. Read it aloud. I want to 
hear you read it aloud.” 

I obediently read from his title-page : “ Drachensnest : 
the Bishop and the Witch : being the True History of 
Zillah, Wife of Barzillai-Ben-Asclier, called the Witch of 
Drachensnest, and of Alvin, Bishop of Drachensnest : now 
first set forth in English by Prince Leonticheff.” 

“ Splendid, splendid ! ” he cried, clapping his hands. 
“ Why, that title is a little masterpiece. And you read 
it beautifully, perfectly. . . . Well, now, I’m going to 

leave this manuscript with you. Take good care of it, 
for it’s worth considerably more than its weight in gold. 
I’m going to leave it with you, and I want you to study 
it. You couldn’t get the full flavor of it by a single 
reading. You must read it straight through at least three 
times. Then you’ll know it, you’ll feel it, you’ll catch 
the enthusiasm of it. After that, when you’re thoroughly 
imbued with it, I want you to translate it. I want you 
to translate it from my manuscript under my supervision. 
Then I’ll publish it simultaneously in French and Eng- 
lish ; and instead of your getting a beggarly little four 
hundred francs for a translation, you’ll get half of what I 
receive for the original French work. I shall take it to 
Calmann Levy, and sell it to him as an original work, 
which it will be in point of fact, not having previously 
appeared in any other language, and I’ll give you half of all 
that he pays me. I translated my last novel myself, and 
it was published simultaneously here and in London ; you’d 
be amazed if I should tell you what Levy gave me for the 
French rights. . . . Now you take it, and study it, 

and let me know whether you think you’ll be able to do it 


138 


MEA CULPA 


justice. Of course you must translate it con amore , or it 
won’t do. I could put in the fine touches for you, and that 
sort of thing, but I’d need a good basis of nice literature to 
work on. The ordinary hack translation would answer 
well enough for an ordinary novel, but not for a little 
chef -d oeuvre like this.” 

I replied that I should be glad to read it, but that I 
feared I should not be able to make the sort of translation 
that he desired, for I could write none but an unpolished 
and unliterary French, a French that would pass muster 
well enough in an ordinary hack translation, but would 
never answer the demands for style which the French 
public would make upon an original work. I said this 
first because it was the truth ; and secondly because I 
suspected that Prince Leonticheff, with his high opinion 
of his own production, would be a difficult man for even a 
master of French style to satisfy. . . . 

I was, accordingly, a good deal relieved, when he re- 
turned, “Well, in that case, of course, you’d better not 
attempt it. I’m sorry, because I was glad of the chance 
to give you an opportunity to make some money. How- 
ever, I’ll leave the manuscript with you, anyhow ; only do 
take great care of it. You’ll enjoy reading it, as you 
probably haven’t enjoyed a work of fiction for a long while. 
I can see that you’ve got taste, and can tell a good thing 
when you find it. Oh, it’s a little jewel, a little pearl ! I’ll 
try to arrange to come here say to-morrow afternoon, and 
then you can read it aloud to me.” 

I dare say it looks like exaggeration, but I pledge my 
word that it is literally true. If I have not exactly re- 
peated his speech, letter for letter, I have mitigated 
rather than accentuated it. And I am sure that I have 
faithfully rendered the spirit of it : that third-personal, 
objective delight in his own creation, and admiration of 
it, which his singular temperament enabled him to enjoy. 


PRINCE LEONTICHEFF. 


139 


“ But I say,” he demanded, sweeping our room and our 
faces with an inquiring glance, “ where’s your eccentric 
friend Armidis ? I expected to find him here. Isn’t he 
the most ridiculous looking creature that was ever allowed 
at large ? A peripatetic ragbag ! I should like to give 
him a decent suit of clothes. But I don’t suppose its 
want of money that causes him to make such a guy of 
himself ; it’s more probably vanity, a desire to be pecul- 
iar, conspicuous, to attract attention. Pity he’s got that 
small weakness, because he really is a man of capital 
talent. I want to see more of him. I’ve been told that 
he’s a great character, very amusing, a good talker, but a 
little cracked in the upper story. I may find him use- 
ful some time, when I need an eccentric personage for a 
novel. Aren’t you expecting him to turn up here for 
dinner? I thought I made it clear last night that I 
wanted you all to dine with me again to-day.” 

“ I don’t know,” said my father. “ He may come. But 
he is not a person whom one can feel at all sure of. He 
always does the thing you least expect. He may come, 
he may not. It’s an even chance.” 

The Prince’s face flushed red, and his voice grew loud 
and harsh. . . . “But didn’t he understand that I 

wanted him ? Didn’t I make that plain enough ? I don’t 
like to be treated in this cavalier manner.” 

“ Oh, I am sure he could never intend to treat your 
Serene Highness cavalierly,” put in my father, hastening 
to appease the Prince’s wrath. “ It is most likely that he 
did not understand himself to be included in your invita- 
tion.” 

“ Well, then, he must be pretty obtuse,” said the Prince. 

“ He is not obtuse,” said I, rather bluntly. “He is the 
least obtuse of men. But he is extremely independent 
and unusual. You must take him as he is, or not at all.” 

“ Well, anyhow, I want him,” said the Prince ; “ and I’ll 


140 


MEA CULPA. 


tell you what. Where does he live ? I’ll go and fetch 
him. There’s plenty of time. It isn’t six o’clock yet and 
we shan’t want to dine before eight. Give me his ad- 
dress.” 

My father mentioned Armidis’s address, but added, 
“ I’m afraid it is a very slim chance that you will find 
him at home.” 

“ Never mind,” the Prince rejoined, now again all good- 
nature. “ I’ll try the experiment. You stay here, and if 
he comes while I’m gone, keep him. You” — nodding to 
me — “ you come with me. Your father won’t object ; will 
you, Banakin? I want to have a talk with you. Nobody 
will know who you are. And the drive will do you good. 
Go, put on your bonnet.” 

Prince Leonticheff, at that moment, struck me as the 
most tiresome person I had ever known, and I shrank 
from the notion of a drive with him. I looked for rescue 
to my father. That he, a most punctilious stickler for the 
proprieties, would sanction the Prince’s proposition, I 
never so much as dreamed. Por me, an unmarried woman, 
to go about the streets of Paris alone in a carriage with a 
young man ! 

But to my surprise, and equally to my regret, my father 
demanded sharply, “ AYell ! Well ! Have you not heard? 
Go put on your bonnet.” 

There was no help for it. Prince Leonticheff was a 
man whom, for my father’s sake, I must not offend. And 
now that my father had said yes, I could not very gra- 
ciously say no. 

A simple Victoria, drawn by a single horse, and driven 
by a coachman in plain black livery, stood in front of the 
Hotel du St. Esprit. 

“ It is sometimes a relief,” said the Prince, when he had 
helped me into this vehicle, “ to put aside the pomp and 


PRINCE LEONTI CHEFF. 


141 


splendor by which I am usually surrounded, and to go in 
for a little quiet, unostentatious comfort. On the whole, 
I thoroughly enjoy being a prince and a millionaire. I 
enjoy the romance of it, the celebrity, the luxury, and the 
power. Some very rich or very illustrious men are always 
tormented by the suspicion that nobody really likes them 
for themselves, and that the people who are pleasant and 
cordial to them are all toadies, and have ulterior designs 
— axes to grind, as the saying is. But I consider that 
morbid and unreasonable. No such fancy ever disturbs 
me. I know I’m a nice, good-natured fellow, a good talk- 
er, a hearty companion, and I don’t see why people 
shouldn't like me for myself, just as well as they would if 
I were a pauper or a nonentity. Of course there are a 
certain number of people whom I can single out instantly 
as mere favor-hunters and sycophants ; I have very del- 
icate instincts and intuitions ; but when all is said, they’re 
an insignificant minority. The great mass of the people 
who make themselves agreeable to me, do so because they 
like me. I know that to be a fact, because I’ve gone 
around a good deal incog., and I’ve been just as well 
treated then, as when I’ve sailed under my true colors. 
Understand ? ” 

“ Yes,” I said, “ I understand.” 

“ Well, that’s the long and the short of the matter ; I 
enjoy my wealth and my rank immensely, but only on 
the condition that I can step down and become a common 
every-day man among men whenever the whim seizes me. 
Now to-day, you see, I’ve quite put aside all pomp and 
circumstance, and am driving about in a one-horse Vic- 
toria, like any bourgeois. I suppose the people that see 
us pass, think I’m some prosperous shop-keeper, or a 
notary, or something, eh ? ” 

“ Yes, very likely,” I said, feeling that he expected me 
to say something. 


142 


ME A CULPA. 


“ Yon know,” lie went on, “ it’s generally believed that 
a really extraordinary man is always extraordinary in 
more ways than one. Well, look at me. I’m extraordi- 
nary first as one of the two or three richest and most emi- 
nent noblemen in Europe ; then, if you please, as one of 
the shrewdest and most influential financiers ; then as one 
of the most extravagant and reckless viveurs ; finally as 
perhaps the ablest living novelist, and certainly the ablest 
writing in English. The consequence is that wherever I 
go, I’m pointed out : here as his Serene Highness Prince 
Leonticheff ; there as the chief of the great house of Luck- 
stone Brothers ; elsewhere as the author of “ The Weird 
Sovereign ; ” elsewhere still as Prince Gigi, the dare-devil 
man of the world. It’s great fun, and I don’t know why 
I should pretend not to enjoy it. If there’s anything 
that I hate and abominate, it is false modesty and affec- 
tation.” 

“They are indeed abominable qualities,” I admitted. 
“ I don’t think you can ever be accused of them.” 

“ I should hope not. . . . But now don’t let’s talk 

any more about me ; I want to talk to you about 
yourself and your father. The poor old man has been 
telling me to-day the whole story of his misfortunes ; of 
how you had to take French leave of your home in St. 
Petersburg, of the sort of life that you’ve been living here 
in Paris, and of the efforts that he’s been making to bring 
his case and his -wrongs to the notice of the Emperor. 
He’s a great talker, as you know ; and I’ve let him talk 
away to his heart’s content all the afternoon. Among 
other things he told me of the unfortunate attachment 
you had formed for that young American painter. . . 

what’s his name. . . .” 

“ Prince Leonticheff 1 ” I cried. My heart was pound- 
ing, and my cheeks felt on fire. “ Oh, how could my 
father have been so , . . ! ” 


PRINCE LEONTICHEFF. 


143 


“ So what ? Why, your father was all right. He told 
it to me in the natural course of conversation, and I was 
very glad he did so, because . . . ” 

“ I must beg you,” I interrupted, trying to control my 
pain and my excitement, and to speak calmly and with 
dignity, “ whatever my father may have said to you, I 
must beg you in the name of decency and delicacy, not to 
speak of it to me. I cannot listen to another word.” 

“ Oh, come, now ! Don’t be angry. You must under- 
stand that I’m a good many years older than you, and be- 
sides that, I’m probably the best friend you and your 
father have got in the world. I think you’re a little 
heroine, and I like you "and respect you. What’s more, 
I’m going to help you. The sort of life that you’re lead- 
ing here is all wrong, and wicked, and wasteful. You 
weren’t bom to spend your days giving music lessons, or 
translating fifth-rate novels. You’ll never be young but 
once, and youth is too precious a thing to be allowed to 
slip away unused. I’m your true friend and your father’s ; 
and I’m going to help you. But first you must let me 
speak my mind freely and frankly, or else we can’t reach 
any common ground of understanding. Now, then, to 
return to what I was going to say about your attachment 
for the young American painter. . . . ” 

My feelings of resentment, of outrage, of confusion, 
were so intense, I could hardly command my voice. It 
cost me a great effort to say, “I have asked you, Prince 
Leonticheff, not to speak to me of that. I do not know 
how I can prevent you, if you choose to take advantage of 
my helplessness to defy my wishes. I can’t jump out of 
your carriage ; I can’t make myself deaf. But it does not 
seem to me exactly — I will not say gentlemanlike — but 
manly, on your part. I thought no one but a coward 
would take advantage of a woman’s helplessness. ” 

“ Why, but look here, I’m not taking any advantage 


144 


MEA CULPA . 


of you. What I want to say won’t hurt you. On the 
contrary, it’s something that will be entirely to your bene- 
fit to hear. It’s of the highest possible importance that I 
should say it to you, for your father’s sake. He asked 
me to say it to you. I said it to him, and he said he 
wished I would say the same thing to you. You ...” 

“ Anything I need to hear for my father’s sake, I pre- 
fer to hear from my father’s lips. I must remind you 
that you are a stranger to me. I cannot allow you to 
speak to me about my private affairs.” 

“ Oh, I say, Miss Banakin ! You mustn’t think of me 
as a stranger. I’ve known you ever since your childhood, 
and I’m your devoted friend. I am more anxious than I 
can tell you to be of use to you, to help your father to be 
reinstated in his rights as a Russian noble. But to that 
end there are certain things which it is absolutely neces- 
sary should be said. And I think it’s weak and unworthy 
and unwomanly on your part to refuse to hear them, be- 
cause they happen to be a little disagreeable. You tell 
me you’d rather hear them from your father. That’s all 
very well, but, as he and I agreed this afternoon, you 
wouldn’t believe them if your father said them to you. 
You’d doubt whether he knew what he was talking about ; 
you’d think he was influenced in his opinions by his 
personal feelings. But you know that I have no personal 
feelings in the matter, and furthermore, that I can speak 
with authority, as one who knows. What I want to say 
won’t hurt you. It’s my duty as your friend to say it. 
Can’t you sink your own little individual feelings for a 
moment, and look upon me as a sort of elder brother, and 
let me advise you ? The amount of it is, I can’t be of any 
earthly assistance to your father if I’m not to be allowed 
to say my say to you.” 

I bit my lips, and kept silence. 

“ You don’t imagine, I hope,” he went on, “ that I am 


PRINCE LEONTICHEFF. 


145 


actuated by any other motive than a desire to serve 
you ? It’s delicate ground ; and if it is painful for you 
to hear me, can’t you understand that it isn’t altogether 
delightful for me to have to say it? . . . Come, I 

want you to tell me what selfish motive I could possibly 
have.” 

“Oh, I suppose your motives are well enough,” I 
answered, sullenly. “ But there are some things that no 
motives can justify.” 

“ Quite so. There are. And now do you want me to 
tell you one thing that no motive can justify ? It’s for a 
young girl, just for the sake of her small personal pleasure, 
to refuse to listen to a man who has matters of the highest 
importance to discuss with her.” 

I made no further resistance. Detestable as it would 
be for me to hear him, perhaps I had better do so. It 
was true, in a way, that I had no right to let my personal 
pleasure or displeasure stand between Prince Leonticheff 
and his willingness or his ability to serve my father. I 
was hot with hurt and shame and anger ; but I sat 
motionless and speechless, keeping my eyes turned away 
from him, and tried to console myself by thinking that 
words break no bones. 

“ Now, then,” he said, “ I will be short and direct. I 
say of your attachment for the young American — I can’t 
recall his name ; something like West — I say its an un- 
fortunate attachment ; and so it is, for more reasons than 
one. It’s unfortunate, first and foremost, because it can’t 
possibly come to anything, the young man being penni- 
less, and you being in a position where you can’t afford to 
marry a poor man. It’s furthermore unfortunate because, 
unless all signs fail, the young man has been inconstant ; 
anyhow, he has stopped writing to you, and is allowing 
you to break your heart for him in solitude. But finally 
and chiefly, and if for no other reason, it’s unfortunate, 
10 


146 


ME A CULPA. 


because the most effective step that you could take to 
damn eternally your father’s cause in Russia would be to 
form an alliance with an American.” 

He paused a moment, as if to give this announcement 
time to sink into my brain. Then he continued. . . . 

“You see, it’s this way. Of course, what you and your 
father want to do more than anything else just now is to 
give the impression at Court, that in spite of the harsh 
and unjust treatment that you’ve received, you remain 
true and loyal subjects. Therefore you couldn’t marry a 
foreigner without asking the Emperor’s permission ; and 
I can assure you of this — the Emperor would never sanc- 
tion a marriage between your father’s daughter and a 
citizen of the United States. If your father had kept his 
mouth shut, and refrained from committing his thoughts 
on the subject of republicanism to paper, it would be an 
entirely different matter. But among the manuscripts 
that were found in his possession when your house was 
searched, was a lucubration in which he declared a re- 
public to be the only rational form of human government ; 
and it was that which did as much as anything else to 
determine his condemnation to Siberia as an untrust- 
worthy person. Well, now, if he applied for leave to 
marry his daughter to an American citizen, a republican 
par excellence , you may imagine the impression that 
would be made in Russia. No, no ; you must give up 
thinking of your young American, you must cure your- 
self of your interest in him. You can do it, if you’ll try. 
I know by experience that it’s a possible, almost easy 
thing, to cure one’s self of an affection that is inimical to 
one’s welfare ; and you must do it. . . . U7a, that’s 

all I had to say on the subject of your love affair. You 
see it wasn’t anything very terrible, and you’ve sur- 
vived it.” 

He seemed to expect me to say something by way of 


PRINCE LEONTICHEFF. 


147 


rejoinder or acknowledgment, but as I held my tongue, 
he presently resumed. . . . 

“For the rest, I may tell you in three words that I am 
going to cause you and Paul Mikhaelovitch to be rein- 
stated in all your rights and privileges at home. It’s 
going to be a difficult, and no doubt a lengthy, undertak- 
ing. But I was never known to fail in anything I seri- 
ously attempted, and I don’t mean to fail in this. If we 
don’t succeed at once, we’ll succeed later ; and if one 
method fails us, we’ll try another. But we’ll win in the 
end. You were never bom to be a poor miserable music- 
teacher on the wrong side of the Seine ; you’re too high- 
born and too high-bred, you’re too pretty and too nice. 
You were born to shine in the great world, and to adorn 
a noble home. You see I’m blunt and bluff, and I don’t 
mince matters or construct fine phrases. I speak out my 
mind in the first and the simplest words that come to me. 
But I want you to believe, Miss Banakin, that my heart 
is in the right place, and that I’ve conceived a deep and 
genuine fondness for you and your father, and that you 
may count upon me as your firm and devoted friend. I 
want to hear you say that you believe me.” 

“ Oh, yes, I believe you,” I said, awkwardly, and not too 
cordially. 

“ Good. "Well, then, as I’ve told you, I’m going to put 
an end to the sort of life that circumstances are compel- 
ling you to lead at present. But first — and this is another 
point of supreme importance — first I’ve got to persuade 
you to join me in influencing your poor dear father to 
sacrifice something that’s as precious to him as your 
young American painter was to you. You know what I 
mean?” 

“ No, I do not,” I said. 

“ Why, this so-called History of Bussia that he’s been 
wasting his time over for I don’t know how many years. 


148 


MEA CULPA. 


In the first place, there’s only one man living who knows 
enough of it to write a History of Russia, and that man’s 
not your father. But, in the second place, this thing 
that he has written would give mortal offence in the very 
quarter where he most needs to curry favor — I mean in 
the Imperial palace. Of course it’s not likely that he 
could ever find a publisher insane enough to undertake 
the expense of printing it ; but if he should, his last 
chance of pardon from the throne would be knocked from 
under him. He’s been reading me scraps of it this after- 
noon, and explaining his point of view, and developing 
his little theories. I told him plainly that I thought he 
was mad. . . . Well, what I want you to do is to 

join me in urging him to burn it. When you’ve given up 
your young American painter, and your father has burned 
his so-called History of Russia, the rest will be, compara- 
tively speaking, plain sailing.” 

My American painter ! There was little need for me to 
give him up. It was he who had already given me up. 
Yet one by one the words that Prince Leonticheff spoke 
seemed to sink into my heart like drops of molten iron, 
burning out the last shred of hope that was left there, 
filling it with a deathly pain and despair. 

Oh, Julian ! Oh, God help me ! 

We found Armidis, and brought him away. Then we 
stopped at the Hotel du St. Esprit for my father, and 
went to dine at the Restaurant Foyot. Somehow it 
seemed to me that I had never in all my life before been 
so unhappy as I was to-night. I could not have told 
why, perhaps, but it was so. Something cold and heavy, 
like a ball of ice, weighed in my breast and made it ache. 
It was as if I had received through some sixth sense a 
vague, occult warning of danger at hand, of approaching 


PRINCE LEONTI CHEVF. 


149 


sorrow greater than any that I had known as yet. Armi- 
dis talked a vast deal to-night, but I could not interest 
myself in what he said, nor smile at his pleasantries. I 
remember, though, this little passage at arms between 
him and Prince Leonticheff. 

The Prince cried out, “ By Jove, you are the most amus- 
ing character I’ve ever met. I’m going to write a novel, 
just for the sake of putting you in.” 

“Your Serene Highness had better not attempt it,” 
Armidis retorted. “ It’s been tried a great many times, 
but it can’t be done. I am the rock upon which so many 
' of my novel-writing friends have made shipwreck. I’m 
quite insaisissable .” 

“ Don’t be too sure of that, my friend,” said the Prince. 
“ One of the remarkable facts about me — and you mustn’t 
allow yourself to forget it — is that what I succeed in, most 
men have tried and failed in.” 

I believed Prince Leonticheff to be, for all his vulgar- 
ity, his self-conceit, his ponderosity, his lack of tact and 
humor, an honest, kind-hearted, well-meaning man, and a 
true friend and valuable ally of my father’s. But to-night 
the sight of his fat face and burly figure, the sound of 
his unctuous, husky voice, were infinitely distasteful, even 
hateful, to me. I dare say it was not his fault, however. 
The light and the savor had gone out of the world. 
Everything was bitter or insipid to my palate. In my 
dull, sick languor the only thing I wished for — but for 
that I wished intensely — was to get away, home, in my 
own room, alone, alone with my dreary thoughts, my dead 
hopes, my bruised, bleeding love. It was, I suppose, the 
instinct of the sick animal to slink off and suffer its dull 
misery in hiding. 

At last we rose from the table. Armidis and the 
Prince walked with us to the door of our hotel. There 
they bade us good-niglit, and went away together. 


150 


MEA CULPA. 


“ Eh bien, my daughter, I consider my cause gained,” 
said my father. “ For only a little while longer shall we 
be forced to lead this wretched Bohemian existence. The 
Prince has come to our rescue, like the gallant nobleman 
he is. In a few weeks this shabby lodging-house will see 
the last of us. We shall be speeding toward St. Peters- 
burg, in a train de luxe , there to resume our proper station 
in the world.” 

At these words, somehow, the grief that was pent up 
in me seemed to find an outlet. I burst into tears. 

“ Oh, father, father,” I sobbed, “ why should we make 
a change ? Are we not well enough here ? We have 
lived here so long, we are so accustomed to our way of 
living. We have plenty ; we are not uncomfortable. The 
thought of breaking up, and going away, and making a 
change for the unknown — oh, it terrifies me. Let us be 
contented, and go on living our quiet, simple life. Oh, I 
wish Prince Leonticheff had never come to us. I wish 
we had never seen him. Let him go away, and leave us 
as he found us.” 

My father stood as still as a statue, and looked at me 
with amazement, with stupefaction, in his eyes. 

# At last he gave his head a toss, and cried, “What is 
this I hear ? Is it that you do not know what you are 
saying? Is it that you are mad? ” 

“Oh, no, I am not mad. I know what I say, and I 
mean it. I can’t bear the thought of this complete break- 
ing up and changing of our life. It frightens me. I don’t 
like Prince Leonticheff. I don’t like to think of him 
entering into our private affairs,, and determining them 
for us. It all makes me feel uneasy and full of terror. 
He may be a very good man in his way, but he is not of 
our kind. Oh, don’t let us put ourselves under such an 
obligation to him. Oh, if he would only go away, if we 
only might never see him any more ! ” 


PRINCE LEONTICHEFF. 


151 


“Well, if you are not mad,” said my father, “then you 
are selfish to a degree that seems incredible. You, who 
are young and strong, you have adapted yourself to this 
that you call our quiet simple life ; but which I call our 
mean, shabby, precarious life : a hand-to-mouth existence 
humbler than that of the smallest bourgeois. You have 
adapted yourself to it, you have even come, it appears, to 
like it, to enjoy it. But I . . . ? Can you not con- 

sider me a little? Just Heaven! Has my daughter 
sunken so low ? And does she desire to* bind me, to chain 
me, to her own low level ? ” 

He ceased speaking for a few seconds, and marched 
backward and forward once or twice through the room. 
I sat still in my place, weeping silently. All at once he 
began again. . . . 

“ I must do you the justice of assuming that you have 
not thought, that you have not considered, that you have 
spoken upon the blind impulse of the moment. You are 
young and strong. But I . . . ? I am old, I am 

far from well. I grow appreciably older, I grow appreci- 
ably feebler, from day to day. My powers of resistance 
become daily less. From my cradle until I am fifty, I am 
habituated to every luxury that our Nineteenth Century 
civilization can procure : I have wealth, leisure, position, 
consideration ; all the pleasantness of large fortune and 
high station are mine. Well and good. Then, suddenly, 
presto ! I am deprived of all this. I find myself stripped, 
as it were, and sent naked into the world. For one, two, 
three, five, six years, I am constrained to live the life of 
an outlaw, an exile, a pauper, a Bohemian, a social non- 
entity. But do you imagine that I resign myself to the 
change ? No, indeed, far from it. I support it as best I 
may, with patience, with dignity, uncomplainingly but 
never with resignation, until my hopes of regaining my 
rights become realizable, and I see then, so to speak, I 


152 


MEA CULPA. 


see reinstatement and restoration, witliin arm’s reach. 
I see myself returned to my own country, my own house, 
my home, my books, my properties; I see myself re- 
established in my natural position among men, sur- 
rounded again by my friends, waited on by my servants, 
universally honored and respected ; I see all this within 
arm’s reach ; but . . . ? What then ? Lo ! I find 

myself brought face to face with a new obstacle, the ob- 
stacle I had least foreseen : nothing less than the opposi- 
tion of my daughter, of my own flesh and blood, parbleu ! 
She would have me throw my opportunity out of the 
window, and voluntarily continue this dog’s life. The 
viper that I have warmed in my bosom turns and stings 
me. Thoughtless, ungrateful child ! ” 

“ Yes, yes, you are quite right,” I confessed, between 
my sobs. “ I did not realize what I said. You forgive 
me? Oh, you must forgive me. I would never really 
oppose myself to anything that was for your good. It 
was just the feeling of the moment. The idea of a com- 
plete alteration in our life frightened me. And Prince 
Leonticheff . . . there is something about him that 

frightens me too, and makes me feel uncomfortable. 
But of course, you are right, and I was altogether wrong. 
Say that you forgive me. Won’t you say it ? Oh, if you 
are going to be angry with me, and not love me, what 
shall I do ? You are all I have in the world. Oh, I am 
so lonesome, so unhappy ! ” 

“ Why, I believe you are hysterical,” said my father. 
“There! Stop your crying. Dry your eyes. Love you? 
What a question to ask me ! I should think you would 
know that my love for you is the ruling passion of my 
life. There, there, my dear ! You see it is telling upon 
you, as well as upon me, this life of hardship and priva- 
tion. It is consuming away your youth, it is wearing 
you out. It is ageing you before your time. You have 


PRINCE LEONTICHEFF. 


153 


not been yonrself for these many weeks. You are losing 
your color, your freshness, your vivacity. The new life, 
the life of ease and luxury, that is about to open before 
us, will be as much to your benefit as to mine. Now go 
to bed, and sleep. Good-night.” 


IY. 


My conception of the character of Prince Leonticlieff 
was a good deal complicated and confused by my reading 
of the manuscript novel that he had left with me. I 
could not quite agree with him in regarding it as the 
most poetical thing in English prose, “or in German, 
either ; ” nor could I share his belief that Goethe 
would have given all he ever wrote for the central idea or 
theme. But, nevertheless, it struck me as an exceedingly 
pretty story, extremely well wrought out. It was grace- 
ful and delicate in form, tender and refined in feeling, 
original in plan, and thoroughly interesting. It seemed 
to me to reveal a fine imagination, a peculiarly genuine 
insight into human nature, and a point of view that was 
at once lofty and enlightened. That absence of humor 
which was so grotesquely distinctive of the author’s per- 
sonality, I did not feel in his work : perhaps because the 
story he had to tell — a tragical romance of the middle 
ages — was not one that called for humorous treatment. 

How Prince Leonticheff could ever have written it was 
the problem that baffled me. Suppose I had discovered a 
cabbage-stalk bearing lilies of the valley ? Before I had 
read his novel, I should have said, if anybody had asked 
me to describe him, “ He is, for all his noble pedigree, a 
big, lazy, heavy Russian mouzhik. He is well informed 
upon certain subjects, he is shrewd, he has plenty of 
rough and ready mother-wit ; but he is vulgar, vain, and 
boastful to a degree that would seem to indicate some 
congenital weakness in his brain ; he is intolerably weari- 


PRINCE LEON T1 CHEFF. 


155 


some ; and lie is absolutely deficient in imagination, in 
sensibility, in tact and delicacy, in all those faculties and 
instincts which are called aesthetic. He is the bull in the 
china-shop, but a good-natured bull, it must be con- 
fessed.” 

What, however, could I say of him now ? 

It was as if the bull had suddenly displayed an ability 
to sing like a nightingale. All my calculations were up- 
set. 

My father said, “ The rough cloak has a silken lining.” 

“Bali-bah!” cried Armidis. “He hires some poor 
devil of a clever fellow to write for him ; then he signs 
the product with his princely name, and reaps the glory 
of it. Don’t tell me ! ” 

Armidis, I thought, was perversely unjust to the 
Prince. He had made up his mind to see nothing good 
in him, to believe nothing but evil of him. 

I accepted my father’s metaphor, and said with him, 
“ The rough cloak has a silken lining.” 

We saw the Prince every day. He was always calling 
upon us at our hotel, having us to lunch with him, to 
dine with him, taking us to chive, sending us handsomely 
bound copies of his works, sending us wines, fruits, and 
big baskets of flowers that looked queer and out of place 
in our small dingy quarters. If he had sent us cut flowers, 
it would have been different ; but the vast, stiff, conven- 
tional baskets that he did send, made my father’s little 
room resemble the loge of a prima-donna. 

For my part, I found his constant and profuse atten- 
tions inexplicable as well as embarrassing. Why should 
he neglect all the other people he knew in Paris, to devote 
himself exclusively to us ? And not to speak of the larger 
service that he had undertaken to render my father, here 
he was daily overwhelming us with smaller favors for 
which we were in no position to render an equivalent. I 


156 


MEA CULPA. 


could not understand it; it troubled me, and made me 
feel uncomfortable and ill at ease. 

One day Armidis said to me — my father had gone with 
his Serene Highness to some races at Longchamps ; and 
the composer had taken me to dine with him on the other 
side of the river — he said, “ I am going to talk very seri- 
ously to you for a few minutes, Monica Paulo vna. To 
begin with, answer me this : don’t you think I am really 
the most forbearing and long-suffering friend that ever 
was ? ” 

“I think you are the best and dearest friend,” I re- 
sponded. “ But what do you mean by long-suffering and 
forbearing ? ” 

“ Why, the way I stick to you through — or rather, in 
spite of — thick and thin.” 

“ Through thick and thin, indeed. But how in spite 
of?” 

“ Oh, dear me ! You literal thing ! So dense, and so 
unkind ! To make a man explain his little metaphors ! 
. . . Your father’s thin, isn’t he ? And heaven knows, 

your Prince is thick.” 

I could not help smiling, though I tried to speak with 
great severity, when I said, “ I have told you before, and 
I wish you would remember it, that I cannot allow you to 
abuse my father. As for the Prince, I am no partisan of 
his, but you are utterly unjust to him. He is a very harm- 
less person ; uncouth, uncivilized, if you please, and dread- 
fully tedious ; but thoroughly well-meaning and kind- 
hearted. And though he says stupid and vulgar things, 
he writes very well indeed. You have taken a dislike to 
him, a prejudice against him ; and you are determined to 
believe nothing but evil of him. It’s unworthy of you.” 

“ Oh, dear me ! What a crusher ! I feel quite blasted. 
You pitiless, unfeeling creature ! . . . However, I 

have a duty to discharge, and I’ll discharge it, no matter 


PRINCE LEON TICHEFF. 


157 


what it costs me. Only, please don’t stare at me in quite 
such a stony way. It disconcerts me, and saps my courage. 

. . . Let me see. . . . Where shall I begin ? ” 

He paused for an instant, and looked at me with one 
of his bright, irresistible smiles : a smile like that of 
a naughty but charming child, eager to be taken back 
into your good graces, but not by any means willing to 
promise to sin no more : a smile against which no rancor 
could be proof. He looked at me thus, until he saw that 
my own face was melting, whether I would or not ; and 
then he went on. . . . 

“ There ! That is better, and so much more becoming. 
Now, what I am in duty bound to say to you is this : If I 
did not know you to be entirely incapable of such a thing 
I should accuse you of carrying on the most desperate 
sort of a flirtation with Prince Leonfcicheff.” 

“ Mr. Armidis ! ” I cried in anger and amazement. 

“ Oh, don’t. Don’t Mr. Armidis me. I haven’t done 
anything to deserve it. I tell you in my very first breath 
that I know you to be incapable of such a thing. I was 
only warning you of what I might say if I knew you less 
well, of what a stranger, witnessing your attitude toward 
the Prince, might say, of what, in fine, the Prince him- 
self very likely thinks. I know you’re not flirting with 
him ; but he, I’ll bet my head, believes you are. Now 
wait a moment. Don’t fling out at me. Contain your- 
self, and let me explain. The Prince, in one word, is mak- 
ing desperate love to you ; and you are suffering him to 
do so unrebuked. The real reason is, you’re so innocent 
and unsophisticated that you’ve never suspected what he 
was up to. But he doesn’t know that, and he naturally 
thinks you like it.” 

“ The Prince making love to me ! What an absurd 
idea ! ” I cried. 

“ Yes ; isn’t it ? Entirely absurd : quite so ; prepos- 


158 


MEA CULPA. 


terous. We’re altogether of one mind concerning that, 
I’m rejoiced to learn. But absurd as it is, it’s so. Now 
listen to me. You’re a woman, a young — comparatively 
speaking, a young — unmarried woman. You’ve had 
scarcely any experience of the world, and none of men. 
What men have you ever known? Your father, Julian 
North, and poor old Armidis, the composer. Well, my 
dear, they don’t any of them count. Each is an exception 
to the rules. But your horrid old Leonticheff ! There’s 
an average man, a typical man ...” 

“ Prince Leonticheff a typical man ! ” I could not help 
interrupting. “ If there ever was an exception, it seems 
to me he is one.” 

“ Oh, for that, yes,” assented Armidis. “ Also an ex- 
ception in certain little superficial ways ; but on the whole 
and under his skin, a fair average specimen of brute beast 
called man for short. An average specimen in that he has 
the average passions, appetites, weaknesses, and code of 
morals. Well and good. You don’t know the species ; I 
do. You are at a loss how to construe its actions ; to me 
they speak louder than words. Now when I see an in- 
dividual of the stripe of Prince Leonticheff devoting him- 
self to a young and pretty woman as he’s devoting him- 
self to Miss Banakin, I know that his designs are not 
platonic. I know that he is making love to her with mal- 
ice aforethought. And, what is more, I know that, seeing 
that she doesn’t resent his advances, or snub him, or put 
him back in his place, he believes that she likes it and is 
encouraging him, leading him on, and meeting him half 
way ...” 

“But he is not devoting himself to me,” I protested. 

“ Oh, he’s not devoting himself to you ? No ? Really ? 
Oh, then I crave a thousand pardons. I thought he was. 
I thought he came to see you every day, and took you 
driving nearly every day, and sent you flowers and books 


PRINCE LEONTICHEFF. 


159 


and things every other day, and was never content unless 
you were dining or lunching with him, and that sort of 
thing. Somehow I had acquired that impression ...” 

“ It is my father. He comes to see my father,” I be- 
gan .. . 

“Your father? Oh, wow-wow T ! Your father’s very 
nice, perhaps ; it’s a matter of taste, and perhaps he’s very 
nice. Yes, as a famous statesman used to say, I’ve no 
doubt that for the people who like that sort of man, he’d 
be just about the sort of man they’d like. But somehow 
as the world is constituted, young men don’t conceive such 
insatiable passions for fathers; no, generally daughters. 
And then consider ! He scarcely speaks to your father. 
He has no eyes, nor ears, nor tongue for anyone but you. 
He glues himself to you like a tame rhinoceros. Oh, be- 
lieve me, I know the type. The Prince is wooing you. 
And he flatters himself that you encourage him. I can’t 
altogether blame him. You pale women with the red 
hair are the devil and all where men’s hearts are concerned. 
But I do blame you a little. You ought to pour some 
cold water down his patrician back. You ought not to 
let him fancy that he’s made an impression. If you don’t 
look sharp, he’ll marry you. There ! I have spoken.” 

“No, no, you are talking nonsense,” I rejoined. 
“ Prince Leonticheff has never said or done or hinted 
anything in the least degree sentimental. If he seems 
devoted, it’s only his way ; it doesn’t mean anything at 
all. I will confess to you that I do not relish his atten- 
tions. They embarrass me horribly, and make me feel 
uncomfortable and disagreeable. The books, the flowers, 
the dinners, the drives, the constant visits, his general 
eagerness to please us, to serve us, they make me squirm ; 
I wish he would stop. But what can I do ? I mustn’t 
offend him. For my father’s sake, I mustn’t offend him. 
What can I do ? What would you have me do ? ” 


160 


MEA CULPA. 


“ Well, I don’t know, I’m sure. I’m not a woman. I 
can warn you, I can put you on your guard ; but I can’t 
tell you how to defend yourself. That’s a woman’s busi- 
ness. I thought I had read somewhere, or heard a rumor, 
to the effect that women generally know without being 
taught how to assert their dignity, and put a too pre- 
suming suitor back into his place. I thought women 
knew how to do this by a sort of instinct. I thought they 
had a method all their own by which, quietly, gracefully, 
with an air of unconsciousness, to wrap round a man 
a beautiful, filmy, delicate, but very cold wet blanket. 
Search within thyself. All I can say is that your horrid 
old Russian Prince has designs upon you. If they are 
not honorable designs, which is entirely possible, jeme'en 
ficlie ! In that case, I know he is in no wise to be 
feared. Only I should like to see you shrivel him up with 
your scorn. But if his designs are honorable, which 
somehow seems most likely — why, then, I tremble. 
Your dear delightful papa’s little ambition will be real- 
ized ; and heaven pity Monica Paulo vna.” 

“ My father’s ambition ? What do you mean? ” 

“ Oh, nothing to speak of. Your father’s ambition is 
simple, natural, and unpretentious. He aspires to marry 
you to the Prince.” 

“ Oh, that is too absurd ! ” 

“ All the same, it is the fact.” 

“Never, never. My father’s not a fool. He knows in 
the first place that I will never marry anyone. In the 
second place, he can see with his eyes shut that no two 
people could possibly be more unsuited to each other than 
Prince Leonticheff and I. And in the third place, he 
knows that a Prince of the Empire isn’t likely to ask me to 
be his wife. He can pretend to the highest.” 

“ Even so ! Your father’s not a fool. Therefore he 
sees, as I do, that your Prince is tremendously smitten by 


PRINCE LEONTICHEFF. 


161 


your charms ; he realizes that from a worldly point of 
view such a marriage would be immensely brilliant and 
advantageous : wealth, rank, a title, position, power, 
everything that a worldling’s heart can desire, at one fell 
swoop ! And if you were not related to him, I should tell 
you that your dear papa is very far from being above 
worldly considerations. Nothing this side of Paradise 
could give him such joyous satisfaction as an alliance 
between his daughter and the Prince Leonticheff. As 
for Julian, poor lad, whom I fancy you had in mind when 
you said you wouldn’t marry anyone, your father regards 
him as quite out of the running. Indeed, he never re- 
garded him as in it ; and if he was suave and amiable in 
dealing with him, it was only to get rid of him the more 
easily. Nothing that your father ever did increased my 
appreciation of the solid diplomatic worth that lies under 
the surface of his guileless-seeming character, as did the 
adroit and noiseless manner in which he sent Julian 
North packing off into the wilderness. Let the Prince 
once declare his intentions, and then watch Paul the son 
of Michael. The worst of it is, I am afraid you will be 
weak and obedient.” 

“ You needn’t be afraid of that, if it ever comes to the 
point. I did not know you had so poor an opinion of me.” 

“ Well, we’ll see, we’ll see. Don’t boast ; it brings bad 
luck. Your father has charms to move the filial breast. 
He’s not a man to stick at a trifle, and neither is your 
Prince. If they conspire together to make a bride of you 
— beware, beware ! I wish to speak moderately, without 
passion, without prejudice, and therefore I will say noth- 
ing more disparaging of Prince Leonticheff than that he is 
the most colossal mass of swinish selfishness that I could 
ever have imagined possible in my worst nightmares. So 
long as his appetites are satisfied, he smiles and is content. 
But heaven help the man, woman, or child, that stands 
U 


162 


ME A CULPA. 


between him and the object his mouth waters for ! You 
might as reasonably look for mercy from a hungry tiger, 
courtesy from an anaconda, compunction from an escaped 
locomotive.” 

“ Prince Leonticheff is not one hundredth part so black 
as you paint him. I am not by any means his champion 
or admirer, but I can’t understand why you should be so 
persistently unjust to him.” 

“Unjust, say you? Now, look you, Monica Banakin, I 
will endure well-nigh anything from you, because I love 
you. But I will not endure to hear you call me unjust on 
the score of your Russian Prince. Anything but that. I 
have had opportunities of judging him which have been 
denied to you. I have spent several unhappy hours quite 
alone with him, en tete-a-tete, listening to his free and 
guileless prattle. I have heard him deliver his mind on 
various themes, human and otherwise, with a degree of 
candor and unreserve which even he could scarcely em- 
ploy in the presence of a young unmarried woman. Now, 
then, I maintain that I am not merely just, but that I 
temper justice with mercy, when I call Prince Leonticheff 
the most appalling monster of gross egotism that I have 
ever encountered. I maintain that I speak with gratui- 
tous temperance when I allude to him as the most odious 
cad that has ever entered my horizon. Far be it from me 
to blacken his fair fame ; therefore I will say nothing fur- 
ther, except that in his conversation, and, by his own ac- 
counts, in his life as well, he is an indecent beast. If 
you ask me to classify him zoologically, I will add that he 
seems to me a cross between a boa-constrictor and a pig. 
You see, I hold myself within bounds. There is no vil- 
lainy, no cruelty, no bestiality of which he would be in- 
capable, if it suited his desire. . . . Now, my dear, I 

want you to snub him. Do it gentle, do it discreetly, but 
do it firmly. Put him back in his place, and let him stay 


PRINCE LEONTICHEFF. 


163 


there. That’s all. I have said my little say. Now let’s 
banish him from our thoughts. He takes away my ap- 
petite, and his name in my mouth tastes bitter.” 

Was Prince Leonticheff so bad as Armidis pretended? 
I could not believe it. The very excess of superlatives 
with which Armidis loaded him, shook my confidence in 
the speaker’s judgment. 

As for his suggestion that the Prince wanted to marry 
me, it was too utterly absurd to deserve a second thought. 


Y. 


It was too utterly absurd to deserve a second thought ; 
and yet . . . 

And yet, within a six-month, I became the Princess 
Leonticheff. 

I must explain, if I can, how step by step I was brought 
to do so. I say, “ If I can,” because, when I think of it 
now, it seems so inexplicable to me, so contrary to all 
naturalness and verisimilitude, that I should declare it to 
be impossible, the shadow of a bad dream, if I did not, 
unhappily, know it to be a most substantial fact. 

Armidis had said, “ If you don’t look sharp, he’ll marry 
you.” 

To which I had responded, “ Nonsense ! He has never 
said or done or hinted anything in the least degree senti- 
mental.” 

The next day he asked me to be his wife. 

Toward five o’clock in the afternoon he called upon us, 
and announced that he had come to take me off for a 
drive. 

“Your father permits. I want to talk to you about 
something important. Go make ready.” 

I would much rather have stayed at home. In the first 
place, the prospect of a long tete-a-tete with him looked 
wearisome and uninviting. In the second place, though 
J did not believe that Armidis’s assertions of yesterday 
rested upon the slightest foundation of truth, they had 
had, nevertheless, the effect of making me feel conscious 
and ill at ease in Prince Leonticheff’s presence, and I did 


PRINCE LE0NT1CHEFF. 


165 


not care to be alone with him. Yet, on the other hand, 
if I should refuse to go, he might take it amiss ; whereas, 
for my father’s sake, I must avoid unnecessarily offending 
him. And then, perhaps, the “ something important ” 
concerning which he wished to speak with me, was some 
aspect of my father’s affair which he could not mention 
in my father’s presence. 

This last consideration played the chief part in deter- 
mining me. I went to my room, and put on my hat and 
gloves. 

The Prince’s Victoria was in waiting in the street. 

“ Well,” said the Prince, as soon as we were fairly off, 
“I’ve had news from Russia.” 

He paused. I did not speak, but waited expectantly 
for his next word. 

“ Do you mind my smoking a cigarette ? Thank you 
. . . Yes, I’ve had news from Russia ; and, not to beat 
about the bush, bad news at that.” 

He paused again ; and I, feeling that some response 
was expected from me, repeated, “ Bad news . . . ?” 

with a suspension of the voice that meant, “ Yes. Go on. 
Tell me, quick.” 

“ I thought,” he went on, “ that I would confide it to 
you in the first place, and then afterward break it to 
your father. Poor old chap, he’s worked himself up to 
such a pitch of hopeful excitement, a set-back now might 
play the devil with him.” 

“ Yes. That was very considerate of you.” 

“ Oh, not at all. You see, I felt that it might make him 
downright ill. Besides, after you and I have had a talk 
together, perhaps the whole complexion of the news may 
be changed. We may be able between us to extract the 
venom from it.” 

Would he never come to his point ? “ The news 

is . . . ? ” I questioned. 


166 


MEA CULPA . 


“ Well, here ... I don’t remember whether I told 
you that I had written to a friend of mine at St. Peters- 
burg — a man who stands wonderfully near the throne — 
that I had written to him to find out whether or not the 
Emperor had any personal feeling against your father. It 
was of the highest importance for me to be informed as 
to that. It would determine, so to speak, my method of 
attack. If he had no knowledge of the affair, or feeling 
in regard to it, except officially, then I would go to work 
in one way. If, on the other hand, he felt in any degree 
personally aggrieved against the old boy — why, then, 
naturally, my tactics would be entirely different.” 

“ Yes, I remember, you told me you had written. And 
now you have had an answer from your friend ? ” 

“ Exactly. I got a letter from him this morning. And 
to cut a long story short, he says that, as ill luck will have 
it, the Emperor bears the strongest sense of personal 
injury. It appears that, when, soon after his accession, 
your father’s partisans brought his case to the Emperor’s 
notice, and began to plead with him for a pardon, he, like 
the sensible man he is, asked to see the documents bearing 
upon the matter; and the manuscripts found in your 
father’s possession were handed to him ; and he read 
them. Now, I don’t want to cast any reflection upon 
your father. I like him, and I esteem him as a man with 
a certain sort of intelligence. But you must allow me to 
say that in some respects he’s little better than a fool. 
Fancy, if you please, that among these manuscripts there 
was one, written — as, for the matter of that, they all were, 
at a time when Alexander III. was still the Tsarevitch, 
which consisted of a series of not very flattering predic- 
tions as to what policy he would probably pursue upon 
coming to the throne ; and his Majesty read that, and it 
didn’t please him. What under God’s heaven ever in- 
duced your father to write it, is more than I can tell. It 


PRINCE LEONTICHEFF. 


167 


was as needless and as purposeless as it was dangerous 
and idiotic. But there it lay in black and white, all nicely 
dated, and signed with your father’s name. His Majesty 
read it, and he didn’t like it. And, weary of the im- 
portunities of your father’s friends, he dropped a hint that 
he would make it uncommonly disagreeable for any person 
who might thereafter mention Paul Mikliaelovitch Bana- 
kin’s name in his presence. ‘ I must live up to the rep- 
utation he has given me,’ was his imperial little mot 
And my correspondent adds that it would be highly im- 
prudent even for me to seek to approach him on the 
subject; that I would run a considerable risk of getting 
into his bad books, and losing my standing and favor at 
the Court.” 

The Prince turned his broad red face full upon me, and 
closed one eye, and smiled. 

“ Then,” said I — and I was conscious of a strange and 
altogether unjustifiable sense of relief — “ then it is a hope- 
less case ? My father’s affairs will have to remain as they 
are?” 

“ Not so fast, not so fast,” returned the Prince. “ I 
didn’t say it was a hopeless case. What can’t be done by 
hook, can perhaps be done by crook. In fact, to put the 
long and the short of the matter in five words, from this 
moment the success or failure of the whole enterprise de- 
pends solely upon you.” 

“ Upon me ? ” 

“ Quite so. Upon you.” 

“ But how ? I don’t see how. What can I do ? ” 

“ That’s just what I am going to tell you. It was to 
tell you that, that I asked you out to drive with me. 
Well, it’s this way. If I approach the Emperor on the 
subject of your father’s wrongs, says my friend, I run the 
risk of angering him, and of losing my standing and favor 
at Court. Well, that’s a pretty big, a pretty serious risk 


168 


MEA CULPA. 


to run, isn’t it? Bather, you say. And if you know 
anything about human nature, you know that a man in 
his senses isn’t likely to rim a risk of that sort, unless 
there’s a prize at the other end of it. A sane man isn’t 
going to run a risk like that out of pure benevolence. 
Now, I’m a wonderfully good-natured fellow, as you must 
have seen ; and I’d do a good deal, and risk a good deal, 
just from sheer kindness of heart. But not my standing 
and favor with the Father of his People. I stop just 
short of that. That is too precious to me. Considerably 
more than half my influence and usefulness in this world 
springs from that. I can’t risk it, except for the chance 
of a big reward. Now, then, my dear Mademoiselle, it’s 
for you to guarantee me my reward.” 

For me to guarantee him his reward ! 

Suddenly I grew cold to the very marrow of my bones ; 
and a tremor of fear and nervousness seized upon me. I 
turned my face from the Prince, and looked into the street 
from the other side of the carriage. Oh, if I could only 
escape, and get away from him, out of his sight, beyond 
the sound of his voice, alone, anywhere, to avoid what I 
doubted not was coming ! That was the only thought or 
feeling that would take shape in my mind. 

“ You see what I mean,” he went on. “ You must 
promise to marry me. I consider that an adequate quid 
pro quo. You betroth yourself to me. Then I make a 
little run into Bussia, and obtain an audience of the Em- 
peror, and brave his wrath, and plead your father’s cause. 
I believe I shall not plead in vain. It may be hard work, 
a pull against the tide, and all that. But I think I can 
assure you that I will not come away till I have got an 
imperial pardon for the old boy in my pocket. At the 
same time I will crave his Majesty’s sanction for our 
marriage. I dare say I have told you that I make it 
a practice never to fail in anything that I seriously un- 


PRINCE Llil ON TIC II EPF. 


109 


dertake. There, now ; I expect you to consider yourself 
from this hour my fiancee . . . What have you to 

answer ? ” 

What had I to answer ! My thoughts were in such 
turmoil and confusion, I could not find words for my 
answer, the only answer that I had to make. And even 
if the words had come to me, my heart was beating so 
hard, I doubt if I could have spoken them. All at once a 
fierce hatred of the Prince had seemed to grow big, and 
burn within me ; a hot, savage anger. Oh, if I could 
only jump from the carriage, and run away, and never see 
his face, nor hear his voice, again so long as I lived ! I 
kept my back turned toward him, and bit my lips, and 
was speechless. I remembered what Armidis had said, 
that women generally knew by instinct how to silence an 
unwelcome suitor ; and I wondered bitterly why that in- 
stinct was denied to me. 

“ Yes,” the Prince continued, in his fat, complacent 
manner, “ you and I must become engaged. You say 
you don’t love me. I know you say that, though you* 
don’t open your lips, because you’re a young girl, and all 
young girls have romantic and sentimental ideas about 
love and marriage. You say you don’t love me ; but the 
important question is, What do I say? I say, Never 
mind. I say also that it is only a question of time 
when you will love me. I never yet knew — this is 
strictly between ourselves — I never yet knew a woman 
who could help loving me, if I seriously tried to make 
her. And — again between you and me —I suppose I’ve 
made love to, and been loved by, something like two 
hundred women in the last ten years. Yes, two hun- 
dred would be a moderate estimate, a very moderate 
estimate indeed. All sorts and conditions of women, too, 
mind you ; from all ranks of life ; of all ages between 
eighteen and thirty-five ; of pretty nearly all nationali- 


170 


MEA CULPA. 


ties — French and English, Bussian and German, Italian 
and Spanish, even Turkish women, Greeks, and Jew- 
esses. Oh, but not with a view to matrimony ; no, no, 
no. You’re the one single woman on the face of this 
planet whom I have looked at with the idea of inviting 
her to become my wife. You say you don’t love me ; and 
I say never mind, for the present. Love isn’t necessary 
to begin a marriage with. The necessary capital to begin 
with is respect and liking. Now, I’m quite sure that you 
respect me and like me. You can’t help doing so, be- 
cause you’re a fair-minded, sensible woman, and I’m a 
thoroughly likeable man, and thoroughly worthy of re- 
spect. Yery good ; you marry me with your respect 
and liking as a basis. If I’m satisfied, I don’t see that 
anybody else is called upon to complain. As for love, 
that will come ; you may safely leave that to me. For 
my own part, I not only respect and like you, but I am 
free to say that I’ve conceived for you the most violent 
passion that I have ever felt for any woman in my life. 
And from the first day I saw you here in Paris, a few 
weeks ago, I confess, I’ve realized that you were the woman 
designed by heaven to be my wife. My wife has got to be, 
first of all, a Bussian ; and you’re a Bussian. Then she’s 
got to be noble, and you belong to one of the oldest 
noble families in the Empire. You might expect me to 
say that she’s got to be rich, too ; but I’m rich enough 
myself to dispense with a dot from my bride, if I choose. 
Then she’s got to be pretty ; and to say no more, your 
appearance and style suit me better than those of any 
other woman I’ve ever seen. Finally she’s got to be 
clever and intellectual ; and you’re that, beyond any sort 
of question. So ! I’ve thought it all over carefully and 
from every point of view; and I’ve decided to make you 
the Princess Leonticheff. You may take that as a great 
tribute to your charms, in more ways than one. Not to 


PRINCE LEONTICHEFF. 


171 


mention the magnificent rank to which I offer to raise 
you, you must understand that I’m a very difficult and 
critical man, extremely hard to please. What’s more, until 
I saw you, I had always said I shouldn’t even think of 
marriage till I was past forty. But directly I did see you, 
it was all up with me. You took me captive at once. . . 

I’m going to speak to your father about it as soon as we 
return from this drive. I tell you, you will wear your 
new dignity like one to the manner born ! I can just see 
you — Madame la Princesse, ruling it over Salchester 
House, wearing the Leonticheff jewels, surrounded by ad- 
miring people, a very Queen, by Jove ! You were born 
for luxury, and I’m going to give it to you. You can’t 
imagine how proud of you I’ll be ! What with your own 
natural beauty, and the sumptuous setting I’ll provide 
for it, the people will turn and stare at you wherever you 
go ; and how they’ll envy me ! ” 

Was ever woman in this humor wooed ? 

At last I found my voice, though it was a weak voice 
and tremulous, I am afraid. 

“ I assure you, Prince Leonticheff,” I said, “ that I can 
never under any circumstances become your wife. Will 
you — will you be good enough to tell your coachman to 
drive home ? ” 

“ Of course,” he rejoined, composedly, “ it strikes you 
as unlikely, even as impossible, at a first glance. But 
when you come to think it over, you’ll conclude that it’s 
not only possible, it’s inevitable. I myself, I don’t mind 
owning, when the idea first occurred to me, I scouted it 
as absurd. ‘Pshaw!’ I said. ‘You don’t want to get 
married, my good fellow. You don’t want to sacrifice all 
the independence and irresponsibility of bachelorhood, 
just for the sake of calling a pretty woman by your name. 
Nonsense ! ’ But gradually the idea grew upon me, grew 
upon me ; and by and by I woke up to recognize it as a 


172 


MEA CULPA. 


case of willy-nilly. You’ve inspired me with a passion so 
deep and violent that I shan’t know any sort of peace till 
I’ve made you my own ; and I’ve got too much respect 
both for you and your father to look at you with any idea 
in my head save that of honorable matrimony. You’ve 
taken such a hold upon my heart and upon my imagina- 
tion that I can’t think or dream of anything else. It sur- 
prises you, perhaps ; but it can’t begin to surprise you as 
it surprises me. I never would have believed that I was 
capable of such a terribly serious attachment. I’ve had 
so many little unmeaning fancies and amourettes, that I 
had rather come to regard myself as proof against any- 
thing more fatal. But here I am, completely undone and 
knocked under by your loveliness. You see, there’s no 
escaping it. We’ll have to get married. I’ll make a 
formal demand for your hand of your father when we 
return to the Hotel du St. Esprit. Now, if you like, 
we may change the subject.” 

“ I wish to tell you, Prince Leonticheff,” I said, “ al- 
though you do not appear to pay any attention to what I 
tell you, that I will never become your wife. Nothing 
that you can say or do, nothing that anybody can say or 
do, nothing that can possibly happen, can ever induce me 
to become your wife. Nothing. I beg of you to accept 
that as my final answer. I must also beg you never to 
speak to me of this again, and not to speak of it to my 
father. It will do no good for you to speak of it to him ; 
it will only bring trouble to him and me, without at all 
altering my resolution ; it will only bring trouble and 
struggle. You have spoken to me to-day in a very un- 
usual way ; you have said things to me that most women 
would find intolerably offensive and insulting. But in 
spite of all that, I still believe you to be a man of kind 
natural feelings, and that you are only lacking in tact and 
imagination. If you do not wish me to think worse of 


PRINCE LE0NT1CHEFF. 


173 


you, you will obey my wishes in this respect, without my 
saying anything more.” 

“ That illustrates perfectly the point that I was mak- 
ing. It will take you some time to accustom yourself to 
the idea. At first it seems impossible to you; and it 
frets you, it disturbs you. As for my being a man of 
kind feelings, of course I am. I am the kindest man you 
know, and the best friend you’ve got in the world. You 
can see for yourself how anxious I am to serve you, you 
and your father. And if you consider it insulting for me 
to speak of a quid pro quo — why, look here. You can’t 
expect a man to put his head into the lion’s mouth, so to 
speak, for mere acquaintance’ sake, can you? You can 
hardly expect me to run the risk of disgracing myself at 
Court out of pure abstract altruism. But for my future 
wife, and my future father-in-law — ah, that’s a very dif- 
ferent matter. You see, I hate cant, and I talk to you 
with a degree of honesty that may seem brutal, but which 
is natural and proper. For the rest, I leave you to per- 
ceive unaided how in every way this offer of marriage 
from me to you is to your advantage. I am a modest 
man, and I shan’t dwell on that. Anyhow, it’s too 
obvious; to do so would be to insult your intelligence. 
I will only say that there is no unmarried woman in 
Europe, under the blood-royal, who wouldn’t jump at a 
chance to become the Princess Leonticheff, and I may add 
that an alliance with royalty itself wouldn’t be too high 
a thing for me to look to, if I cared for it. I’m no mere 
puny Russian Prince, you must remember ; I’m a Prince 
of the Empire. I’m one of the richest men in Europe, at 
the same time, and one of the ablest writers. Why, if I 
ask a woman to marry me, she ought to go about all the 
rest of her mortal days thanking her stars for her luck. 
It isn’t conceivable that any woman in cold blood should 
refuse me. Why, if I told you the names of some of the 


174 


MEA CULPA. 


families in Eussia, in England, in Prussia, in France, 
that have flung their daughters at my head, you’d be 
amazed, you could hardly credit it. I’m his Serene 
Highness Prince Leonticheff ; don’t allow yourself to 
forget that. ... It may not be so clear to you how 
the union I propose will be equally to my advantage, but 
that’s only because you don’t understand yet how fond I 
am of you. My heart is set upon you, and when my 
heart is set upon a thing I must have it. Yes, the thing 
is inevitable, it’s bound to be. You must make up your 
mind to it. You must think it over, and try to realize 
the grand good fortune that has happened to you. All 
unmarried Europe will envy you. But apart from that, 
you’re not going to set yourself up as the single obstacle 
between your father and his chances of restoration to his 
rights in Eussia ; you couldn’t find it in you to do that. 
And I — I’m not going to let you, the prettiest and the 
sweetest woman I’ve ever known, and the woman I’ve 
fallen desperately in love with, I’m not going to let you 
continue to slave your youth away as a music-teaching 
drudge here in Paris. It isn’t right ; it must be stopped ; 
it’s gone on six years too long already. Your father tells 
me, and I’m able to see for myself, that it’s gradually 
wearing you out. Your strength is failing you. IVliy, 
he says, you’ve grown visibly thin and pallid even during 
the last few months. He’s very seriously alarmed about 
you ; and if you were wise, you’d be alarmed about your- 
self. Suppose your health should give out? Here you 
are, so to speak, the sole prop your poor old father has 
to lean upon, his breadwinner, his nurse, his comforter. 
Well, suppose your health should break down ? Eh ? 
Where would he be ? And if you have to go on drudg- 
ing and worrying very much longer, your health will break 
down, and then there’ll be the devil to pay. No ; what 
you must do is written upon the walls ; marry Prince 


PRINCE LEONTI CIIEFF. 


175 


Gigi. Then your father will be re-established in the pos- 
session of his own properties; and you’ll have a rich hus- 
band to take care of you, and protect you from all harm. 
That’s my last word for the present. It is understood 
that you and I are engaged.” 

“ Prince Leonticheff, will you be so good as to tell your 
coachman to drive home ? ” I demanded. 

“ Stonehouse ! ” he called out. “ Back to the Hue St. 
Jacques.” 

We finished our drive in silence. To me it seemed to 
last hours and hours. When it was over I went straight 
to my room, leaving Prince Leonticheff to join my father 
in his. 


VI. 


I went straight to my room, and locked my door be- 
hind me. 

Exhausted, unnerved, unstrung, I flung myself upon my 
bed, and closed my eyes. In my weakness, I could not 
shake off a feeling like terror, as if I were in some im- 
mediate, imminent peril. I could not shake it off, though 
I knew perfectly well that it was unreasonable and ground- 
less ; and it afforded me a sense of security and relief to 
think that my door was locked. 

Never to see Prince Leonticheff again ! Never again 
to hear his voice, feel his presence ! I was surfeited with 
him. The mere thought of him filled me with sickening 
disgust. I remember I said to myself, “ I will not leave 
this room until I can do so without the slightest risk of 
having to meet him. No, not until I know that he has 
gone away from Paris.” It did not occur to me how dif- 
ficult, how impossible, of performance this vow might 
proveto be. It struck me as the simplest, the easiest, 
thing in the world, just to shut myself up in my room, and 
refuse to open my door, until I was persuaded that Prince 
Leonticheff had gone away from Paris. 

And then — my father ! I was oppressed by a great 
weary dread of the struggle which I knew I should pres- 
ently have to undertake and carry on with my father. I 
had told the Prince that I would never become his wife, 
that nothing conceivable could ever induce me to become 
his wife ; and it had been, comparatively speaking, easy 
for me to say that to him. But I knew that I should pres- 
ently have to repeat it to my father, to repeat it and 


PRINCE LEONTICHEFF . 177 

maintain it , and from that prospect I shrank fatigued be- 
forehand, as from a labor far beyond my strength. 

I did not see my father again that evening. He came 
to my door, it is true, and rapped, and said it was time to 
go to dinner. 

“We have been waiting for you. Why do you delay ? 
Make haste.” 

But I answered that I had a headache, and was tired, 
and did not want any dinner ; and rather to my surprise, 
and very much to my relief, he went away without insisting. 

In the morning, however, I said to myself, “ What 
must be must be. I have got to have it out with him 
sooner or later. Nothing can be gained by putting it off. 
On the contrary, it is best to nip the thing in its bud. 
They can’t make me marry him by main force. This no- 
tion of staying in my room is quite impracticable ; I have 
things to do. Besides, it would give the affair too much 
importance ; it would be a confession of weakness and of 
fear of them. I must put on a bold front, I must seem 
absolutely determined, and absolutely confident of my 
own strength. Come ! ” 

So I plucked up my courage, and went down to my 
father’s room. My teeth were set, and my fingers were 
clenched, but my heart was beating so hard that it 
pained me. 

My father greeted me kindly, and with a certain air of 
gay raillery. 

“ Ah, ma file ! ” he cried, patting my cheek, and 
laughing into my eyes. “ Our headache is better ? We 
have slept it off? Allons ! Pas de mauvaise horde ! 
Confess ! It was but a little ruse, a little innocent trans- 
parent ruse, whereby to hide our blushes ? Eh ? Eh ? ” 

He paused, and looked at me with a face all smiles. 
Then he made a bow, and said, “ But I forget my duties. 
Princess, receive my felicitations.” 


178 


MEA CULPA. 


I stood still, and summoned all my self-command, and 
asked, “ Prince Leonticheff lias told you what he said to 
me yesterday ? ” But my voice trembled, and betrayed 
my nervousness. 

“ Naturally ! He could scarcely have done less. And 
why otherwise should I offer you my felicitations ? . . . 

Ah, Monica, in my wildest dreams I have never dared 
to hope for you anything approaching in brilliancy this 
destiny that has actually laid itself at your feet. You 
are indeed a charming girl, and now your charms have 
made your fortune for you, and mine for me. And 
wasn’t it a lucky day for us when I read Leonticheff’s 
name in Figaro ? Madame la Princesse ! Indeed, you 
deserve it, my dear, you are in every way worthy of it. 
It is heaven’s compensation to you, to us, for all that we 
have been called upon to suffer during the last six years.” 

“But I should suppose that he must also have told you 
of the answer that I gave him,” I said, coldly. 

“ Olala ! That doesn’t matter. Piff-paff ! Whatever 
you may have answered on the spur of the moment, in 
the flush of your emotion and surprise, is of no con- 
sequence. To an offer such as his there is of course but 
one final answer. A Princess of the Empire ! It simply 
overwhelms me. I know not how to express my joy and 
my gratitude.” 

“ Well, father, I only wish to repeat to you what I said 
to the Prince. The answer I made on the spur of the 
moment will be my final answer. I will never marry 
him, never. Nothing in the world can ever bring me to 
marry him. Absolutely nothing. There is no man liv- 
ing whom I would not rather many, if I had to marry at 
all. I wish to say this to you now, at the very beginning, 
so that you may understand it, and not get your heart set 
on the impossible, and so store up a disappointment for 
yourself. I will never under any conceivable circum- 


PRINCE LEONTICHEFF. 


179 


stances many him. It will be absolutely useless for you 
to try to persuade me. There is nothing imaginable that 
I would not rather do. I would far rather, far rather, 
die. If there were no other way of escaping him, I 
would kill myself without a moment’s hesitation. But 
there is no danger of its coming to that. I simply will 
never consent to be his wife ; and even if he could drag 
me by force to the altar, no priest will marry a woman 
without her consent. That is all. I feel that it is my 
duty to warn you of that at the very outset.” 

My father looked at me with a tolerant, incredulous 
smile ; such a smile as one might wear in listening to the 
boasting of some silly child. In the end he gave a gentle 
little laugh. 

“ Poh, poh, poh ! ” he cried, cheerfully, with a jaunty 
shrug and gesture. “ Say what you please, my dear ; I 
allow you complete freedom of speech, so long as you 
don’t let it affect your behavior. Say what you please ; 
but you are not an imbecile, and I am quite sure you will 
do the proper thing. You have very good brains in your 
little head, and a very good heart in your little bosom, 
though sometimes you make very foolish and very 
naughty speeches.” 

“Well, I have said all I had to say,” I repeated. “I 
will never marry Prince Leonticheff. I have given you fair 
warning. It is for you to accept it in your own good time.” 

“No, you are neither an imbecile, nor — nor a little self- 
ish cat. It would be the part of an imbecile to let pass 
this most dazzling opportunity. But it would be the part 
of a black-hearted, cold-blooded egoist to stand between 
her father and the realization of his most cherished wish 
—to constitute herself the sole obstacle to his receiving 
his rights at the hands of justice. Leonticheff is one of 
the richest, one of the most illustrious, and one of the 
most powerful members of the noblesse of Europe; at 


ISO 


ME A CULPA. 


the same time he is a man of the kindest and most chiv- 
alrous nature, a man of intellect, and a man precisely 
suited to you in point of years. You are not such a fool 
as to throw away a chance to unite yourself in marriage 
to a man like that. It is the sort of chance that comes 
but to one woman in a million once in a generation. But, 
what is more, you are aware that my hopes of restoration 
to my rights in Russia all depend upon your betrothing 
yourself to him. You, my daughter, my own flesh and 
blood, are not going to set yourself up as the sole impedi- 
ment to my success ? You are not so abominably selfish 
and ungrateful as that.” 

“Yes, I know that the Prince would like me to be the 
price of his services to you. He was frank enough to tell 
me so. He said that he would consider me an adequate 
quid pro quo. I appreciate the compliment ; but thank 
you, no ! ” 

“ What an unworthy speech ! So to misrepresent 
the motives and intentions of a most honorable gentle- 
man ! Can’t you see that it was a piece of gratuitous deli- 
cacy on his part, knowing that the marriage he proposed 
was one that would be entirely to our advantage, to put 
it as if it would be his reward for services rendered to 
me ? And, at all events, what claims have we upon him ? 
What right have we to expect him to render us so great 
a service, at the risk of what is more precious to him 
than his fortune, without the promise of a reward ? The 
Prince, as you say, was frank, where other men would 
have been hypocritical. All the more to his credit is it.” 

“ Very good. I do not wish to discuss it with you. I 
may be both an imbecile and an egoist ; but one thing is 
very certain : I will never marry Prince Leonticheff. A 
gentleman, indeed ! It will be utterly vain for you to 
talk to me about it. You can’t shake my resolution. 
You can only tire yourself and me. That is all.” 


vn. 


That was late in June. In September we were for- 
mally affianced. In December we were married. 

Meanwhile . . . 

Armidis said to me, “ I can’t bear a man who crows, 
you know. It’s so indelicate and vulgar — in a word, 
Leonticheffian. But really now, am I not quite remarka- 
ble as an amateur prophet ? ” 

“Yes,” I admitted, laughing. “If it gives you any 
satisfaction to think so, you are really quite remarkable 
as an amateur prophet.” 

“ And you own now that my estimate of the Prince’s 
character erred, if it erred at all, on the side of kindness ? 
It’s quite wonderful, my insight into human nature. I 
don’t know whether I ought to congratulate myself upon 
it or not. It is often a source of pain to be too clear- 
sighted.” 

“ Oh, no, I don’t think the Prince is altogether the 
abandoned ruffian that you would make him out. I am 
not going to marry him, and I don’t like him. I am sick 
of him, his voice, his face, his vast loose figure, his 
fatuous, unctuous manner, his boastfulness, his indelicacy 
and indiscretion — everything — they irk me and irritate 
me, and make me squirm ; I am satiated with them. But 
that is no reason why I should be unjust to him. I think, 
with all his faults, he is well-meaning and honest accord- 
ing to his light. I think he is far more a fool than a 
knave. I don’t believe he would ever do anything if he 
thought it wrong. I believe the whole trouble with him 


182 


MEA CULPA. 


is a lack of humor. He lias no perspective, no sense of 
congruity. That accounts for his grossest solecisms, his 
enormous self-conceit, his brutality and obstinacy, all his 
unpleasant traits. But I am sure that he is really, down 
deep, kind-hearted and well-meaning. A thoroughly bad 
man never could have written ‘ Drachensnest.’ ” 

“ Oh, dear ! What a dangerous state of mind ! Oh, if 
you go on believing that there is a single microscopical 
particle of good in him, they’ll have you married to him 
yet. Oh, for my sake, won’t you please think that he is 
just the most hopelessly immoral scoundrel that was ever 
created, and the most egregious cad, and the most fatuous 
idiot ? You might think that, to oblige a friend.” 

“I should be glad to oblige you ; but I don’t see how I 
can force myself to think what isn’t so.” 

“ Then I tremble for you. Beware, beware ! ” 

My father, at first, would not pay the least attention to 
my refusal, would not take it with any degree of serious- 
ness. 

“I do not scold you, I do not reason with you, nor 
plead with you,” he said. “Why? Are you curious to 
learn why? Well, simply because I consider you already 
betrothed to the Prince. Bemember, you are his 
promised bride.” 

The Prince himself pretended to assume the same atti- 
tude. “We are engaged to be married, you know,” he 
would remind me from time to time. 

I, for the most part, kept silence. 

My father demanded, “How long do you intend to pout 
and sulk, like a silly child? How long before you are 
going to behave reasonably, like a full-grown woman? 
How long before you will accept the good fortune that 
heaven has sent you, and be thankful for it ? ” 

I did not answer ; but I wondered, “ How long before 
they will realize the utter futility of their conduct? ” 


PRINCE LEONTICIIEFF. 


183 


One day — tlie Prince having repeated for perhaps the 
fiftieth time, “We are engaged, you know ” — I asked him, 
“ If that is so, why do you loiter here in Paris ? Why 
don’t you keep your promise, perform your part of the 
agreement, go to Russia, and obtain a pardon for my 
father from your friend the Tsar ? ” 

“ Ah, but . . . ! ” he cried. 

“Am I to consider that a sufficient answer? ” I in- 
quired. 

“But, don’t you see, it’s this way. I fancy I would 
prefer to wait about doing that until our engagement is 
sealed and ratified by your own word of assent. It’s only 
a formality, of course, like the Queen’s signature to a law 
in England; yet I think I will wait till it is complied 
with. I’m a wonderfully patient man.” 

“ Oh, then,” said I, “ I suspect that our engagement is 
not such an absolutely certain thing after all.” 

“ On the contrary, quite certain, positively certain,” he 
retorted. “ Only I am like these Parisian cabbies, je de- 
mande des arrhes ! ” 

Ar midis told me one day that he had had “ such a pa- 
thetic little confidence ” from my father. 

“ Such a pathetic little confidence, poor dear man ! 
He complains that you do nothing but pout and sulk. 
He can’t get a word from you ; nothing but just pout- 
ing, sulking silence. He wouldn’t mind it so much, 
he says, except that he fears it may end by antagon- 
izing the Prince. He’s afraid his Serene Highness will 
get tired and go away ... A word to the wise, my 
dear ! Continue to pout and sulk and hold your pretty 
tongue.” 

Presently my father began to lose patience. He began 
to argue with me. He reminded me that it was the inva- 
riable custom among people of our class and nation for 
young girls to marry the husbands whom their parents, 


184 


MEA CULPA. 


from the vantage ground of greater age, experience, and 
wisdom, picked out for them. 

“ We are not Americans,” he said. “ We are not Gyp- 
sies or Bohemians. We are Bussians, and we are noble, 
of the superior nobility. Has any woman of your family, 
or of your class, ever dreamed of contracting a marriage 
except at the will of her parents ? Or ever dreamed of 
rejecting the man of her parents’ selection ? Why should 
you, by what right do you, expect to be an exception to 
the rule ? The trouble is that, owing to the irregular, 
happy-go-lucky mode of life that we have been compelled 
to lead during the last five or six years, you have got out 
of the tradition of your class. You have assimilated a lot 
of cheap, modern, revolutionary ideas. Armidis, with his 
preposterous unconventionality, is to blame. I curse the 
day when we first met him.” 

Then he dwelt upon the manifold and manifest virtues 
of the Prince ; his wealth, his rank, his celebrity, his good 
nature. But finally and chiefly he appealed to my right 
feeling, my sense of duty, as his daughter, not to set my- 
self up as the sole obstacle to the consummation of his 
hopes in Bussia. And when I showed myself deaf and 
insensible even to this last appeal, he denounced me as 
a monster of selfishness and ingratitude. 

“ Look at this miserable closet, this hole in the wall, 
called a room, in which I, at my age, with my tastes and 
habits, am constrained to live and move and have my 
being ! . . . I, who was bom in the lap of luxury ; 

who from my cradle until a few years ago was accustomed 
to every phase of ease and pleasantness that ingenuity 
could invent, and money purchase; I, an old man, a 
failing man ! It is shortening my life, it is hurrying me 
to my grave ! I have endured it as long as I can. Every 
day it becomes more and more humiliating, more and 
more insupportable, to me. This precarious, restricted, 


PRINCE LEONTICHEFF. 


185 


mean, ignoble manner of existence! A perpetual alter- 
nation between privation and hardship on the one hand, 
and ignominy and mortification on the other. And then 
to think that but for my daughter, but for my own flesh 
and blood, I might be relieved of all this to-morrow ! I 
might to-morrow be reinstated in the enjoyment of my 
own fortune and my own position in my own country! 
To think that it is due to my own flesh and blood that I 
must pass my declining years in poverty and exile ! It is 
too much. In very deed, it is sharper than a serpent’s 
tooth to have a thankless child.” 

“ I suppose I am a monster of selfishness,” I began to 
think. “ Here, at any rate, it is certain that I have it in 
my power to procure my father all that he most desires. 
Yet I refuse to do so. Why ? For no better reason, after 
all, than that it suits me better. In other words, I refuse 
to sacrifice my own will and pleasure for his. That is 
what is generally called selfishness. It is true that if I 
would marry Prince Leonticheff, my father’s dearest 
dreams could be fulfilled.” 

This thought began to prey upon me, to haunt me and 
torment me ; that it was my fault, my fault alone, that 
my father had, as he said, to pass his declining years in 
poverty and exile. If I would, I could rescue him from 
them. I had but to speak one word, and honor and 
riches awaited him. Surely, I thought, it is selfish of 
me to refuse to speak that word. And yet I felt that I 
could not speak it ; that it was a difficulty of power, more 
than one of will, that I could never bring myself to speak 
it ; that my lips would refuse to shape it, my tongue to 
utter it. 

“ Remember, it is shortening my life. You are short- 
ening my life,” my father said. 

“ Oh, father, I can’t do it, I can’t do it,” I groaned. 
“I would do it, if I could; yes, if I could, I believe I 


186 


MEA CULPA. 


would ; but I can’t. It is beyond my power. Don’t look 
at me and treat me and think of me as if I were wantonly 
injuring you. I would do anything, anything but that. 
But when I think of Prince Leonticlieff in that way, my 
whole nature recoils ; I loathe him and hate him, and I 
hate myself. It is not my fault. I can’t do it, I can’t. 
Oh, I wish you could understand.” 

“ Oh, I understand, I quite understand ; I assure you 
it is not difficult to understand. Go on. Continue. 
Sacrifice everything to your selfish weakness,” returned 
my father, Contemptuously ; and for three weeks after 
that he would not speak to me. 

Then one day Prince Leonticlieff announced to us that 
he was going to leave Paris. My heart leapt as if a great 
weight had been removed from it. 

“ I have an old engagement to. take some English 
friends of mine off for a cruise on my yacht. "We’re 
bound for Norway, and we shall be gone all of August. 
I’ll let you hear from me now and then. Early in Sep- 
tember you may expect to see me again. Good-by.” 

“There,” said my father to me, after he had gone; 
“ you have done it at last. You have done what I feared. 
You have tired him out. There was a limit to his for- 
bearance. Now he has gone. Farewell my hopes. Pict- 
ure to yourself what I have to thank you for. He will 
not come back. You may congratulate yourself upon a 
pretty stroke of business.” 

I said nothing, but in my heart I thought, te Alas, I 
am afraid he will come back.” 

That was the first word my father had spoken to me 
for three weeks. All through the month of August he 
scarcely spoke to me again. 

Sometimes I would think, “ After all, what is the use ? 
If it is a question of my happiness, am I not already as 


PRINCE LEONTICIIEFF. 


187 


unhappy as unhappy can be? The only thing I really 
care about, I can never have. Already life is nothing to 
me except a constant weary pain. Nothing that could 
happen could make the pain any greater. No, not even 
marriage with the Prince. It would only be to change 
the form of my misery ; it would not add to it. And — it 
would lift my father into the seventh heaven of delight. 
As it is, I am of no use or value to any living human 
being, not even to myself. By consenting to marry the 
Prince, I should become of value to my father. Perhaps 
I had better do it.” 

But then a vision of the Prince would shape itself be- 
fore my imagination ; his burly form, his hulking car- 
riage, his fat, florid face, his complacent, ingratiating 
smile, his coarse red hands, all the hateful details of his 
person and his manner; I would hear his monotonous, 
satisfied voice, husky and oily in the same breath ; and I 
would shrink from the thought of him with an overmas- 
tering, physical disgust, like a child whom people are 
urging to drink some nauseous medicine. 

But even yet I did not believe him to be a vicious man. 
On the contrary, I still believed him to be at the core 
kind and well-meaning, though infinitely crude and un- 
lovely on the surface, and unutterably tedious. 

Though my father would not speak to me, he talked 
very freely to Armidis ; and Armidis sometimes repeated 
what he said to me. 

“ He describes himself as quite frantic,” Armidis told 
me. “ Here,” he says, “ is a marriage offering itself, far 
more advantageous than any he could have hoped for 
you, even if you had retained your position in Russia ; 
of course ten thousand times more brilliant still, in view 
of your actual circumstances ; and you, in sheer whim 
and caprice, you set yourself against it. It is to fly in 
the face of Providence. It would try the patience of a 


188 


MEA CULPA. 


saint. It is a piece of gross, unreasoning selfishness, for 
which there is not even the shadow of an excuse. It is 
driving the poor man to despair. Oh, my ducats ! Oh, 
my daughter ! He thinks I am to blame. I have instilled 
ridiculous notions of independence into your little head. 
Now he wishes me to speak with you, labor with you, use 
my influence with you, seek to bring you to reason, and 
to repair the mischief I have wrought ; all which; you 
see, like the amiable and obliging fellow that I am, I do 
to the best of my poor ability.” 

He said all this laughingly ; but now, “ Ah,” he cried, 
suddenly becoming grave, “ you are going through a few 
of the bitterest experiences a woman’s life can hold. 
Forsaken — or apparently forsaken — by the man you love, 
and importuned to marry the man you don’t love ! It is 
very bad, very hard, my dear. But keep up your cour- 
age, keep up your strength, and tire them out.” 

“ Yes,” I said, “ if they don’t tire me out first.” 

It was beginning to wear upon me, my father’s policy 
of silent disapprobation. Treated all day long every day 
as if I had done something shameful and disgraceful, 
never spoken to, and met constantly with cold reproach- 
ful glances — it was beginning to be more than I could 
bear. It somehow undermined my confidence in the 
righteousness of my own cause, making me feel as if I 
really had done something shameful and disgraceful, so 
that I carried with me a heavy sense of guilt, like an evil 
conscience. 

“ Oh, I wish I were your father’s father,” said Armidis. 

“ Why do you wish that ? ” I questioned. 

“ Oh, if I were his father, wouldn’t he catch it, though ! 
I’d give him something that he’d remember all the rest of 
his life. Haven’t you noticed the prodigal way in which 
he has been adding to his wardrobe lately ? ” 

No, I hadn’t noticed it. Was it so? 


PRINCE LEONTICIIEFF. 


189 


“ You’re so self-absorbed you don’t notice anything 
nowadays. Paul Mikhaelovitch has been blossoming out 
in half a dozen new suits of clothes. What I w r ant to 
know is where he gets the funds ? ” 

I went home, and I asked my father, “ Have you been 
borrowing money from Prince Leonticheff ? ” 

“ By what authority do you presume to question me ? ” 
returned my father. 

“ I want to know. I want you to tell me. Have you 
taken money from him? ” 

“ I must decline to answer any such impertinent ques- 
tions from my daughter,” he said. 

But what was equivalent to an admission. My father 
has been borrowing money from the Prince ! Did not 
this add a serious element of complication to the problems 
that I have to face ? 

“ Will you tell me how much ? Will you tell me how 
much you owe him ? ” I pleaded. 

“ I will not tell you anything. I will not talk with 
you. Until you come to me in a spirit of contrition, and 
beg my pardon for your selfish obstinacy, and offer me 
your obedience, you need not expect me to hold any inter- 
course with you.” 

Toward the end of August I received the following 
letter from the Prince. It bore the Copenhagen post- 
mark. ... 

“Dear Mademoiselle Banakine : 

“ As you see by the date of this note, I am aboard 
the Tchernobog, off Copenhagen, on my way back to 
Paris from our cruise in these clear Scandinavian waters. 

“ You have no doubt observed that I am a very rough 
and awkward man with my tongue. Somehow it seems 
as though Nature had decreed that the pen should be my 


190 


MEA CULPA. 


instinctive vehicle of expression. The moment I take my 
pen in hand, a change comes over my entire character. 
A load is lifted from my mind, my faculties are un- 
chained, my vision becomes clearer, my thoughts become 
keener, my feelings purer and better. And I am like a 
dumb man suddenly blessed with the gift of speech. I 
discover to my surprise, to my joy, that I can express my- 
self faithfully ; that I need no longer stumble and stam- 
mer, and expose myself to misconstruction because of the 
imperfection and ambiguity of my utterance, but that I 
can say what I am moved to say in the way my heart 
longs to say it. 

“ Many times, many times, I have tried to tell you that 
I love you ; I have tried by word of mouth to give vent to 
these deep and strenuous emotions of passion and of ten- 
derness that have been stirring in my heart of hearts ever 
since the day I first saw you in Paris a few months ago. 
Will you let me try once more to tell it to you, to tell you 
that I love you and how I love you ; this time with my 
pen on paper ? Love you ! Love you ! Oh, I love you 
so dearly, so dearly and tenderly, so entirely ! There is 
nothing in my power, there is nothing that I can imagine, 
which I would not do to procure you a moment of happi- 
ness, or to save you from a moment of pain. I love you 
so dearly that at this moment I would cut off my own 
hand, if by doing so I could bring one ray of joy into your 
life, or expel from it a single pang of sorrow. 

“ I want you to become my wife. Oh, how my heart 
leaps as I write the words ! My wife ! You, Monica, my 
wife ! I want you to become my wife. I want it first 
because I am human and therefore, selfish ; and I have 
come to love you so utterly that my only hope of happi- 
ness in this world depends upon you ; so utterly that if 
you send me away from you, I shall feel like one going 
out into eternal darkness upon a measureless desert of 


PRINCE LEONTICHEFF. 


191 


dry and arid sand ; whereas if you will take me to you, if 
you will accept me, all my life will become one radiant 
glorious blessing to me. But I want it secondly, because 
there is an unselfish element in my love ; because I know 
I can make you happy. I can make you happy and I can 
make your father happy. And the whole world will be 
happier and better for our great happiness. Oh, believe 
me, Monica ! Believe me and trust me, and say that you 
will be my wife. 

“ I wish you to know this : that there is no concession 
I will not make in order to win you. Ask me anything, it 
shall be yours. Impose any condition, I will submit to it. 
No kinder husband ever existed than you will find me. I 
shall make it the sole aim and occupation of my life to 
shelter and protect you, to serve you, to provide for you, 
to cherish and keep you. And all I ask in return is the 
privilege to call you by my name, to look at you and think, 
She is my wife, my wife ! 

“ Do you believe I love you ? Do you believe in the 
seriousness and earnestness and kindness of my love? 
How then can you fear it or mistrust it ? How can you 
fear it or mistrust it ? How can you hesitate to give your- 
self to the keeping of a man who loves you like that ? 

“ Ah, but my love is unrequited ! I tell myself that a 
hundred times a day. She does not love me, she does not 
love me ! I tell it to myself over and over ; but it does 
no good. My own love is so great and ardent, I cannot 
be other than hopeful. For see : you do not love me, but 
neither do you hate me ; and if you will only marry me, I 
will be so good to you, so devoted, so faithful and so 
tender, I will serve you so untiringly. I will in one syl- 
lable make you so happy, that in the end you cannot help 
but love me. Oh, give me a chance to prove it to you. 
If you could look into my heart, and see with your own 
eyes how true and pure, how absolute and all-controlling 


192 


ME A CULPA. 


my love for you is, you could not hold out against me, 
you would not hesitate for an instant to confide your 
happiness to me, you could not fear or doubt such a love 
as that, you could not withstand it or refuse it. 

“ I am coming to Paris to press my suit in person. I 
shall arrive during the first week of September. Do you 
wish to know the question that is never absent from my 
mind ? that repeats itself over and over in my thoughts 
all day, that keeps me awake at night, or if I sleep haunts 
my dreams ? It is this : Will she have me ? Is there any 
hope for me ? 

“ Until the first week in September ! Ah, the time 
seems long. 

“ You are to give my best respects to your father, and 
remember me kindly to Mr. Armidis. And whatever 
happens, whatever fate you reserve for me, believe me 
now and always your devoted 

“ LtfONTICHEFF.” 

A queer love-letter, surely ; perfervid ; even comical ; 
but I could not smile at it. All day long, after reading it, 
I went about with a dull anguish in my heart, as if I had 
been threatened with some hideous calamity, and could 
not hope to escape it. 


VIII. 


One evening in the last week of August I came home 
from an errand across the river, and had rather a startling 
little experience. 

It was intensely hot. I had walked all the way home, 
and had got very tired and very heated. I went up to my 
room. My room faced northward, so that it was protected 
from the sun ; and the window had been open, and the 
blinds closed, all day; and it was deliciously fresh and 
cool. 

I sat down to rest. I felt strangely tired, unduly tired, 
weak, languid, almost faint. I had a queer sensation of 
weight upon my chest, and of compression, as if it were 
bound in an excessively tight bandage. But I closed my 
eyes, and lay back in my chair ; and the air from the win- 
dow swept over me, bringing a grateful, reviving coolness. 

All at once I began to cough. It was a cough unlike 
any that I had ever had before, deeper, more violent. It 
seemed as if my lungs were full of glue. I could not 
breathe. I could do nothing but cough, cough, cough, to 
save myself from suffocation or strangulation. I remem- 
ber I thought, “Why, this is strange. I have not had a 
cold. What makes me cough like this ? ” 

Suddenly my coughing ceased. I reached for my hand- 
kerchief. . . . What I saw in another minute upon 

my handkerchief tinned me to ice from head to foot. It 
was blood, a great scarlet patch of blood, vivid as flame 
upon the white linen. 

My heart stopped beating, and a horrible thrill of terror 
13 


194 


MEA CULPA. 


ran through all my body. It yas like suddenly hearing 
the voice of Death in my ears, and feeling the glacial 
touch of his hand. 

I was utterly ignorant about such things. Only in a 
general way I knew that hemorrhage was considered a 
symptom of something alarmingly wrong in a person’s 
health. In my ignorance I thought, “ There ! I am go- 
ing to be ill, to have consumption, or something. . . . 

Oh, heavens, what shall we do now ? What will become 
of us now ? If I am going to fall ill, and be unable to 
work ! ” 

What Prince Leonticheff had said came back to my 
memory with awful force : “ Suppose your health should 
break down ? Eh ? ” His face rose before me, lit by a 
triumphant smile, and seemed to question me : “ Well, 

now ? What are you going to do ? Where will your 
daily bread come from now ? ” 

The bleeding continued from time to time throughout 
the night. I think I hardly need to say that I suffered 
all the agonies that the imagination, stimulated by fear, 
and unrestrained by any sort of knowledge, can occasion 
one. 

I did not wish to frighten my father, if it could be 
helped. So, in the morning, without telling him, I went 
to the consulting room of Dr. Druot, who, I knew, was 
esteemed one of the ablest specialists in diseases of the 
lungs in Paris. 

He put me through a long and fatiguing examination. 
In the end he said, “ I find a consolidation of the apex of 
the left lung. No, it is not a case for serious alarm, but 
it is a case for great care. If you are extremely careful, 
the consolidation may be resolved away. No, no, it is 
not consumption, not at all ; but if it were neglected, it 
would develop into consumption. You must leave Paris 
at once. You must go to the country; Switzerland I 


PRINCE LEONTICIIEPP. 


195 


would recommend, or the Tyrolean Alps. You must eat 
well, sleep well, guard yourself religiously against ex- 
posure to cold, and never allow yourself to get in the 
slightest degree fatigued. It is essential that your mind 
and body should enjoy perfect repose. Any sort of strain, 
bodily or mental, to which you might be subjected, would 
tell instantly upon this weak spot, this point of least re- 
sistance.” 

“ Yes, I understand,” I said. “ But suppose I were too 
poor to do all this ? Suppose I could not afford to leave 
Paris ? That I must stay here to do my daily work, and 
earn my living ? What would become of me then ? ” 

“ Ah, madam, the people who get well of troubles like 
this are those who are able to take proper care of them- 
selves. The others, those who are in the predicament 
that you describe, they are the ones who die.” 

“ Well, that is my predicament exactly,” I said. “ I 
have no money except what I can earn from day to day 
by teaching music. Now I beg of you to be perfectly 
candid, and tell me the worst.” 

“ If you wish me to be candid, I will say that unless 
you take absolute rest, and great care of yourself, you will 
probably become an incurable consumptive within six 
months.” 

“ And if I do take that rest and that care ? ” 

“ Oh, there is no reason why you should not become 
perfectly well and strong, and live to a green old age. 
You are not especially ill as yet ; but according as you 
live a life of ease or of hardship, you will get very much 
better or very much worse within a short period. If you 
continue to work, you will have to go to the hospital be- 
fore the spring.” 

So it reduced itself to this ; I would no longer be able 
to earn a livelihood for my father and myself. In other 
words, destitution stared us in the face. 


196 


MEA CULPA. 


“ The doctor forbids me to work. If I don’t work, we 
starve. If I do work, I sicken, and perhaps die, and my 
father is left to starve alone,” I said to myself. 

The corollaries were obvious. 

I went home and I said to my father, “ Soit ! I will 
marry Prince Leonticlieff, if he will take me when he 
learns the condition of my health.” 

“ And now,” concluded Armidis — he had come to me 
in a great state of indignation and excitement, to ask, “Is 
this true, that your father tells me ? ” and when I had 
answered, “Yes, it is quite true,” he had talked with me, 
reasoned with me, pleaded with me, for an hour, trying, 
as he said, to save me from myself ; but my mind was 
made up, and I had listened to him with incredulity and 
obstinacy, fool, fool, fool that I was — “ And now,” he 
concluded, “it will be your own doing, your own fault. 
You will have no one but yourself to blame for all the 
unutterable misery that you are going to bring upon your- 
self. I tell you that a loveless marriage is the worst sin, 
the worst sacrilege, that a human being can be guilty of. 
Nothing can justify it, nothing. It is a violation, a deg- 
radation, a profanation of everything that is fine or good 
or sweet, of everything that is sacred, in human nature. 
How you can bear the thought of it I cannot understand. 
I should think you would rather die a thousand times. 
Look: I will use plain words with you. You are no 
longer a child, and I can use plain words with you. 
Well, then, I say it is worse, it is immeasurably worse, 
than prostitution : for prostitution is but for the hour or 
for the day, whereas this frightful marriage is for life. 
Oh, my God ! Monica, Monica ! Oh, where is your soul? 
Where are your instincts, your intuitions ? ” 

He walked rapidly up and down the room, wringing his 
hands, breathing heavily. I sat still in my chair, looking 


PRINCE LEONTICHEFF. 


197 


hard at the floor, determined to let nothing that he could 
say alter my resolution. 

“ Listen to me,” he went on. “ There never yet was a 
loveless marriage made that didn’t end in wretchedness, 
not only for the woman, but for every one in any way 
concerned. It isn’t only your own happiness, and Julian 
North’s happiness, that you’re dealing a death-blow to, it 
is just as surely your father’s happiness, Leonticheffs 
happiness, the happiness of your unborn children. Your 
children who will come into this world conceived not in 
love, but in a man’s lust, and a woman’s loathing ! And 
Leonticheffs happiness, I say. No, even if, instead of 
being the brute beast that he is, even if he were the pur- 
est and the most honorable gentleman in the world, not 
loving him, you would have no right to marry him ; not 
loving him, if you married him, you would do him, him 
as well as yourself, a great wrong ; you would engulf 
him and yourself, and your unborn children, and every- 
body else concerned, in hopeless misery. Not loving 
him, you have no right to many him. How much less 
right have you to marry him, when you do love another 
man ! Oh, I tremble for you, I tremble for you. But I 
have done my utmost to save you, and now it will be 
your own fault. . . . Oh, I know, I know what you 

are going to say,” he cried, as I started to interrupt him. 
“ I know, I know ! Julian North does not love you any 
more ! He has neglected you, he has abandoned you ! 
I don’t believe it ; I have told you a hundred times 
that I don’t believe it ; but I will grant it for the sake 
of the argument ; and then, what of it ? What of it ? 
Do two wrongs make a right ? So long as one last par- 
ticle of tenderness for him, of regret for him, lingers in 
your heart, you have no right even to dream of marrying 
another man. Oh, is there nothing that I can say, noth- 
ing that I can do, to move you, to bring you to reason, 


198 


MEA CULPA. 


to wake you up, and rescue you from this utter ruin? 
Oh, it is like a nightmare. I see you in extreme peril, 
but unconscious of your peril, and I long with all my 
strength to warn you, to save you ; but when I call out to 
you, you refuse to hear me, you are deaf and insensible. 
It is a question of ways and means ? It is to avoid des- 
titution? You cannot work any more, and if you don’t 
work, starvation stares you in the face, you and your 
father ? Don’t I tell you that I will never let you want, 
you or your father ? Don’t I tell you that so long as I 
have a shilling in my pocket, half of it will be for you ? 
Oh, you can’t accept help from me ! You would rather 
sell yourself body and soul to the devil, than accept help 
from me, from a friend who loves you like his own child, 
from one who has five times more money than he needs to 
spend, and would never feel the difference ! You would 
rather sell your soul to the devil, and make your body 
over as a chattel to Leonticheff ! Oh, you drive me mad, 
you drive me frantic. I see you in this great peril, and I 
see that you do not realize your peril, and I signal to you 
and call out to you, and you are deaf and blind, and I 
know that in a little while you will have wrecked your life, 
wrecked it forever. I believe — I do honestly believe — it 
would be better if I should kill you. Better if I should 
kill you here, now, on the spot ! ” 

“ I wish you would, I wish you would,” I cried. “ But 
if you don’t kill me, if no one kills me, if I have to live, 
then. . . 

“ Then it will be your own fault, I say. If you marry 
Prince Leonticheff, it will be of your own free will, with 
your eyes open, and the consequences will be your own 
fault. I have shown you all the true morality of the 
matter as clearly as speech can do it. I have offered you 
every means of escape. Now, if you do it, you do it of 
your own free will, in perfect knowledge and understand- 


PRINCE LEONTICUEFF. 


199 


ing of wliat you are doing, and of wliat must inevitably 
follow. You are deliberately choosing to sow the wind, 
and you are perfectly aware that you must reap the 
whirlwind. Now I will say no more. I have done. I 
have tried to save you from destroying your happiness, 
but that is not all. I have tried to save you also from 
destroying your soul, from debasing and polluting your 
soul. Happiness doesn’t matter so very much, perhaps ; 
perhaps you could never have been entirely happy ; but 
your soul. . . ! The soul that God has intrusted to 

your keeping ! What right have you to rain that ? Oh, 
I tell you, the worst part of such pain as you are storing 
up for yourself is not that it is hot and biting and hard to 
bear : the worst part of it is that it demoralizes the soul, 
that it corrupts and diseases and disintegrates the soul. 
Yes, pain of that sort is infinitely, irresistibly demoraliz- 
ing. Mark what I say, and learn in good time how true 
it is. Watch the gradual demoralization that will come 
upon you, creep upon you, grow upon you, from the day 
of your wedding to the end. Oh, I know the process : it 
is thus. I want to be happy ; I have keen and strong in 
me the craving for happiness that is common and intrin- 
sic to human nature, like the craving for food, for drink, 
for air. But I have done that which puts happiness for- 
ever beyond my reach. I have sold my birthright in 
happiness for a mess of pottage. I have made a bargain 
whereby I have renounced all claim to happiness, though 
I have obtained nothing in compensation. Very good, 
very good ; now look. All this time the craving for hap- 
piness is there in my heart, gnawing like hunger, burning 
like thirst. It begins to be unendurable. This bargain 
that I have made I have got the worst of ; this renuncia- 
tion, I begin to think, is artificial, is unnatural, is unjust ; 
this deprivation is unreasonable, uncompensated, impos- 
sible. I brood upon it, brood upon it ; and by and by my 


200 


ME A CULPA. 


brooding reaches the ear of the devil, like a voice sum- 
moning him, and he comes to me. He says to me, 

4 How is this ? You crave happiness, but you have sold 
your claim to it. So ! By fair means, then, it appears, 
you can’t hope to obtain it. Well, then, why not try foul 
means ? Why not try to steal a little of it back ? ’ And 
the instant the Tempter first puts the question to me, that 
instant I begin to go to pieces, my moral disintegration 
sets in. His breath upon my conscience has produced 
a little spot of corruption, of gangrene ; and now it be- 
gins to spread. I cannot obtain happiness by fair 
means ; well, then, why be too scrupulous about the 
means ? . . . You doubt what I say ? It is a fancy, a 

phrase ? Yery good. Have it so if you like. Ten years 
hence, five years hence, I will ask you for your maturer 
opinion. Meantime, oh, God pity you ! ” 

The Prince went with us as far as Geneva. There he 
left us, for what he called a little run into Russia. At 
the end of six weeks he came back, bearing two impor- 
tant documents. One was a full and free pardon for my 
father, restoring him to all his rights as a Russian 
nobleman, including the possession of his sequestrated 
estates ; the other was an Imperial authorization of our 
marriage. 

We were married at Nice, in December. Then my 
father bade us good-by, and returned to St. Petersburg. 


PAKT IV 


it A TRIMONT. 



. 

* 







I. 


Early in May, 1890, we came on to London, to pass 
the season at Salchester House. A few days after our 
arrival, however, Prince Leonticheff went away again. 
He said to me, “ I shall probably be gone a fortnight or 
three weeks.” But he did not tell me where he was going. 

We had been married more than four years. It is es- 
sential to the purposes of this confession that I should 
now set down as accurately and as dispassionately as 
possible the conception of Prince Leonticheff’s character 
which I had come to entertain as a result of those four 
years of close acquaintance with him ; also that I should 
summarize briefly the history of our married life; and 
finally that I should explain the actual state of our re- 
lations to each other. 

My greatest difficulty will be to do justice to Prince 
Leonticheff. 

I feel that unless this story that I am trying to tell, be, 
in all its aspects, in all its details, in all its inferences 
and implications, as true as human endeavor can make it, 
then it will destroy its own raison d’ etre , it will defeat it- 
self ; and all the time and labor that I have given it will 
have been expended in vain. And especially, if I err in 
my account of Prince Leonticheff, if the picture I present 
of him be false in color or distorted in form, I might as 
well, I might better, have held my peace. 

I should find it easy enough to say in three words : I 
was miserably, incredibly unhappy ; he treated me with 
the grossest brutality, the most refined cruelty ; I hated 


204 : 


MEA CULPA. 


him, I loathed him ; he was bad, bad, bad. And all this 
would be true, in a way ; but it would be only a fraction 
of the truth ; it would be the truth seen from only one 
angle ; and in its effect it would equal a falsehood. 

For my own sake, if for no better reason, I must try to 
suppress my personal feelings, and to make my testimony 
concerning him impartial and discriminating. 

To begin with, then, I must admit that he was not en- 
tirely bad, not by any means entirely bad. To this it 
might be answered that no human being ever was entirely 
bad, or entirely good; that absolute perfection or abso- 
lute depravity are no more attainable in flesh and blood, 
than a mathematically perfect line or circle is attainable 
with ink and paper ; that in the heart of the most spotless 
saint or the most exalted hero there must lurk some re- 
maining traces of human wickedness or weakness, while 
in that of the most vicious evil-doer some remote, per- 
haps microscopic, fibre must survive not wholly corrupt. 
. . . But when I say of Prince Leonticheff that he 

was not entirely bad, I do not mean it in that niggard 
philosophic sense. I mean that in an appreciable num- 
ber of his actions and impulses he was positively good. 
Indeed, if I could leave his relations with me out of the 
question, I should be obliged to declare that, on the 
whole, as men go, he was not much worse than the aver- 
age. So long as he was comfortable in mind and body, so 
long as he had his own way, and his appetites were satis- 
fied, he really was a good-natured and well-meaning per- 
son. With money, for example, he was extremely free- 
handed, giving large sums annually to many charities, 
lending large sums to relieve the embarrassments of his 
friends, and always readily drawing his purse from his 
pocket when any case of distress among the poor was 
brought to his notice. If physical courage be a virtue, he 
had it in abundance. To give but a single instance, when 


MATRIMONY. 


205 


malignant typhus was raging in Southeastern Russia, in 
the summer of 1886, he left London at the height of the 
season, and went straight to the district where the pesti- 
lence was doing its worst, and remained there for more 
than a month, visiting the hospitals, distributing alms, and 
writing descriptions of the horrors that he witnessed, for 
the English public to read in his newspaper, the Beacon. 
. . . He was coarse, if you please, and vulgar, and 

fatuous to the verge of insanity; he was clumsy and 
heavy and tactless ; he was so completely wrapped up in 
himself that he never thought to avoid offending the sen- 
timents of his neighbors ; but his usual condition of mind 
was, none the less, one of lazy smiling contentment, the 
outward and visible sign of which was a broad and imper- 
turbable good-nature. 

Yes, if his relations with me could be eliminated from 
the problem, I believe I should have to say of him that, 
despite his conceit and his vulgarity, taken for all in all, 
and tried by the ordinary standards of the world, he was 
not much worse than the average of men. 

A point upon which I must bear is this : that he thor- 
oughly and profoundly believed himself to be, not merely 
no worse than the average man, but far, far better. He 
thoroughly believed himself to be a paragon of all manly 
virtue. He was no cynic, no hypocrite. He admired 
the nobility of his own character as fervently and as sin- 
cerely as he admired the power and acumen of his own 
intellect — with a sincerity and a fervor indeed that were 
almost religious. I am sure that under no possible cir- 
cumstances would he ever have done anything that he 
thought brutal, or mean, or wrong. But then, he always 
thought, earnestly and honestly thought, that what he 
desired to do was right. That — or, in other words, his 
total lack of humor — was the key to his personality. 
Lacking humor, he lacked all sense of perspective, of con- 


206 


MEA CULPA. 


gruity, of proportion, in looking at life. He regarded 
himself as the Centre of the Universe, the Fact of su- 
preme significance in the world ; his wish, his idea, his 
sensation of the moment was the one thing of real im- 
portance. If you opposed his wish, or disputed his idea, 
or caused him a disagreeable sensation, he believed in all 
conscience that you were a double-dyed villain, actuated 
by the basest motives, and attempting a most horrid 
crime ; and that he was not simply justified, but that he 
was morally bound, to go to any length, to employ any 
means, for the purpose of vanquishing you, of confuting 
and confounding you, and defeating your nefarious de- 
signs. 

I said long ago that the results of his lack of humor 
upon his conduct, often queer, were sometimes appalling. 
I believe that his lack of humor was accountable for the 
very worst meannesses, brutalities, and cruelties of which 
he was ever guilty, as well as for his most ridiculous 
solecisms. When, for instance, he would strike his wife, 
I am convinced that he believed himself to be performing 
an unpleasant but righteous duty, just as a father at times 
believes it to be his duty to administer corporal punish- 
ment to a refractory child. 

At the time of our betrothal I had said very explicitly 
to the Prince — what, for the rest, it was scarcely necessary 
to say — “ It must be understood that I do not love you, 
that I can never love you.” 

“ Oh, that will be all right,” said he. “You don’t love 
me now, and I don’t ask you to. But you will love me, 
you will come to love me. You can’t help loving me, 
when once I’ve had a chance to woo you. I’m not at all 
disturbed about that.” 

“I assure you, you are deceiving yourself,” I responded. 
“ If you choose to marry a woman who does not love you, 
well and good. It is your own affair. But you mustn’t 


MATRIMONY. 


207 


delude yourself with the fancy that I shall come to love 
you. I never shall, I never can. It is best that you 
should make up your mind to that now, at the outset. 
Otherwise, you will prepare a disappointment for your- 
self." 

But he had chosen not to heed this warning, not to 
give it any weight or place in his calculations. He be- 
lieved that his powers of fascination were altogether 
irresistible, and that no woman could help succumbing to 
them, if they were once brought to bear upon her, any 
more than she could help drowning if she were immersed 
in water. Herein lay the beginning of much of our 
trouble. For awhile after our marriage, I must do him 
the justice of saying, no man could have been more 
patient or more forbearing with a woman’s indifference 
than he was with mine. . . . 

“Now that I have won your hand, you must let me 
win your heart,” he said. “When you have seen how 
truly and devotedly I love you, how eager I am to make 
you happy, how untiring I will be in your service, how 
kind I shall be, how I shall have no other purpose in life 
than that of contributing in some way to your happiness 
and your well-being, I am sure your heart cannot hold out 
against me.” 

And for the first winter after our marriage, I must con- 
fess, there was nothing in his conduct, nothing even in 
his speech, of which I could fairly complain ; on the con- 
trary, nothing but what, remembering always that I was 
his wife, and he my husband, nothing but what deserved, 
even if it didn’t obtain my gratitude and my praise. He 
was on his good behavior. In his speech he subdued and 
mitigated himself to such a degree that one who had not 
known him before would perhaps never have thought of 
him as an especially unrefined or underbred man. And 
in his conduct he was certainly all that I had any right to 


208 


ME A CULPA. 


expect considering our relations — considering that I had 
sold myself to him, and was his wife. He was indeed 
untiring in his efforts to serve me, to make me happy ; and 
if I remained miserably unhappy, if I was unhappier than 
I had ever been before, than I had ever conceived of being, 
it was not his fault : it was the fault of the situation, and 
the situation was the result of a bargain that I myself had 
made. He had the tact and the delicacy — incongruous as 
it may seem to speak of tact and delicacy in connection 
with Prince Leonticheff — he had the tact and the delicacy 
seldom to obtrude himself upon me. If he saw that his 
attentions were unwelcome to me, he would suspend them ; 
that his talk was unwelcome, lie would be silent ; that his 
presence was unwelcome, he- would go away and leave me 
alone. I say, “ If he saw,” for unless a thing of that sort 
were extremely plain, he could not see it ; and I generally 
would try not to let him see. 

“ I never believed that he was a villain, but now I know 
that he is really, according to his light, a good man ; far 
kinder and better than I ever gave him credit for,” I 
began to say to myself ; and if I still could not like him, 
if I felt no gratitude toward him, I began at least to re- 
spect him and admire him. 

We spent that winter in his villa at Nice, my health 
making it impossible for us to go to Russia. We would 
never meet till the afternoon. His mornings he passed in 
his study, writing. After the mid-day breakfast he would 
usually come to see me in my apartments, often bringing 
his manuscripts with him to read them to me. Then he 
would ask, “ And how would you like to spend the after- 
noon ? ” Whatsoever wish I expressed in answer to this 
question, he bowed to without a murmur. If I mastered 
my repugnance for his company enough to say, “ I will go 
for a drive with you,” or what else of the sort, it was al- 
most touching to witness his suppressed delight. If I 


MATRIMONY . 


209 


said, “ I should like to be alone this afternoon,” he would 
answer, “Very well,” and submissively withdraw. He 
was surely as kind, as forbearing, as I, whom he had re- 
gularly bought and paid for, who bore his name, and ate 
his bread, and was his wife, had any right to expect. 

“ No,” I said to myself, “ it is not Prince Leonticheff 
whom I must blame, it is the situation, and the situation 
is one of my own making. If I had to sell myself at all, 
I could scarcely have sold myself to a better man than 
Prince Leonticheff.” And my wonder was great that so 
clear-sighted a person as Armidis could have formed so 
mistaken an estimate of him. 

But all the same, the situation was an extremely pain- 
ful one, a most terrible and hateful one, and I was very far 
from happy in it. I would look at those other woman, of 
the half- world, who throng the Biviera at this season, and 
I would realize that after all the difference between them 
and me w'as not a moral difference, was only a conven- 
tional difference ; and my heart would burn, and I could 
not lift up my eyes. Would I some time become accus- 
tomed to it, and not mind it any more, like them ? I un- 
derstood with a sort of sick horror that that sort of relief 
would be worse than the pain itself ; that it would mean 
the final death and corruption of whatever remained pure 
and clean in my soul. 

Oh, I was very far from happy. I had determined to 
put the thought of Julian North absolutely out of my 
mind, the love of him absolutely out of my heart. Per- 
haps I had succeeded in doing so ; but it had been a little 
like tearing out a living fibre, and it left a wound that 
ached. It had been, too, like taking away from my life 
the only thing that made life worth living, the only thing 
that gave me an object to hope for, to work and wait for, 
to look forward to : now my life was all meaningless, pur- 
poseless, insipid to me ; and as I realized how irrevocable 
14 


210 


MEA CULPA. 


it was, and how it must go on like this, without aim, with- 
out savor, for who could tell how many years — probably 
until I died, an old, old woman — I could not help it, but 
I fell to asking, “ What is the use ? Wherein is it worth 
while ? Oh, have I got to plod this dismal circle round 
and round until I die?” Sometimes these questions 
would simply depress me, and fill me with a sort of dull, 
languid despair ; but at other times they would infuriate 
me, madden me, with hurt and resentment. “Here is 
my one life,” I would cry, “ my one precious life, mine 
for once in the course of all time ; and must I sit still, 
with hands tied, like Tantalus, and see it slip by, just be- 
yond my reach, unemployed and unenjoyed ? Of no use, 
interest, or profit to a single living human being, least of 
all myself ! Is this what I was born for? Is it for this 
that life was given me ? Life, precious, 'mysterious life ! 
Must it be squandered in pettinesses, in fruitless and 
flavorless nothings, when it is not scorched and with- 
ered with pain and shame ? Oh, I would rather die at 
once.” 

At first I had tried to find some solace, some oblivion, 
some excitement, in the doings of society, and in the 
chances of Monte Carlo. At first I had not altogether 
failed ; but as soon as the novelty wore off, gambling 
began to pall, and society to wear, upon me. I was not 
very strong, and dressing and going, going and dressing, 
fatigued me ; and besides, the Russian and English peo- 
ple who made up our world, were one and all either the 
fastest of the fast, or the slowest of the slow ; in both 
cases equally unsatisfactory. 

But as the spring drew near, Prince LeontichefFs 
patience began to show signs of giving way. He had 
tried all winter long to move my heart, and win my love. 
So long as he had been able to hope that by kindness he 
might prevail, he had been kind. If I could have loved 


MA TRIM ONT. 


211 


him, I do not doubt, he would have continued kind. Bill 
I could not love him ; and now, as he began to lose hope, 
as he began to think that perhaps I might never love him, 
his attitude toward me, and his treatment of me, began to 
alter. 

At the outset, however, the alteration was not greatly 
for the worse. His attitude acquired a certain expression 
of injury, of righteous long-suffering, as if I had wantonly 
sinned against him, and he was sorry, rather than angry. 
His treatment of me became a little empresse , and seemed 
to imply a reproach, as if I were a perverse child, and my 
perversity grieved him. The germ of all our trouble lay 
in this : Prince Leonticheff was utterly unable to under- 
stand that I could not love him ; that it was with me not 
a question of willingness, but a question of power ; that I 
had no more power to change the nature of my feelings 
toward him, than I had to change the color of my eyes. 
He was utterly unable to understand that. As undoubt- 
ingly as he believed that he lived and breathed, so un- 
doubtingly also did he believe that no woman upon whom 
he chose to exert his charms could help loving him, if 
she would only let herself go ; and his inference was that 
I, perversely, deliberately, of malice aforethought, was 
holding myself back, was checking the natural tendency 
of my emotions, and laboriously compelling myself to 
remain indifferent to him. Believing this, he not un- 
naturally felt aggrieved, felt that I was cheating him of 
what he had earned, that I was withholding from him his 
due, that I was of set purpose refusing him justice ; and 
he commenced to regard himself as a wronged man, a sort 
of martyr, and me as a cold-hearted, wicked woman. 

His attitude toward me, and his treatment of me, as I 
say, implied a grievance and a reproach ; but it was a 
long while before he spoke. We left Nice in May, 1886, 
to come to London. It was in the train, in the seclusion 


212 


MBA CULPA. 


of a Pullman compartment, as we were nearing Calais, 
tliat lie first broached the subject of his wrongs. 

“ Look here, Monica,” he said, ■“ I want to have a little 
talk with you. I want to have a little serious talk 
with you, if you don’t mind. I think you will be fair 
enough to acknowledge that I haven’t troubled you much 
this winter with talk about ourselves, and now perhaps 
you can endure a little. There are things that ought 
to be said.” 

“Yes?” I answered, in a flutter of nervous apprehen- 
sion. 

“ Well, to begin with, I know it would be utterly use- 
less for me to ask you whether you care anything for me. 
I know you don’t. You don’t care a halfpenny for me, 
you don’t care a farthing. I’m as fond of you, as careful 
of you, as kind to you, as a man can be to a woman, and 
yet you don’t care any more for me, you haven’t any more 
ordinary affection for me, not to speak of love, than you 
have for the engine-driver of this train.” 

He paused for a little ; but I kept my eyes turned from 
him, and did not speak ; and by and by he resumed. . . . 

“ All this winter long I have done everything in my 
power, everything I could think of, to make you happy, 
to make you comfortable and contented, and to move your 
heart a little toward me. Whatever wish you have ex- 
pressed, or I have been able to divine, has been law to 
me. I’ve never asked a single service of any kind from 
you ; and when you have chosen to do me one unasked, 
I have accepted it with thankfulness, as if, instead of 
being iny due, it were a gratuitous favor on your part. 
I have always preferred your pleasure not only to my 
pleasure, but to my interests. I know, for instance, that 
some of my best friends, some of my most valuable 
and useful friends, have been offended this winter by 
our neglect of them. But I saw that you didn’t care for 


MATRIMONY. 


213 

them, that it would be a bore for you to have to visit 
them much, or entertain them ; ancl so I said nothing, 
I made no protest or complaint, I let you go your own 
way, and ignore them. I only mention that as an 
example of what I mean when I say that I’ve made no 
demands upon you, that in small things as well as great 
I’ve respected your pleasure as if it were the only thing 
of importance in the world.” 

“ Yes,” I said. “ You have been very good, very pa- 
tient and forbearing. But I did not mean to offend your 
friends. If I had known that you cared about it, I should 
have been perfectly willing to receive them and visit 
them as often as you liked. I simply waited for you to 
express your desire.” 

“ Quite so, quite so. Don’t understand me as com- 
plaining of your conduct. I’m not complaining of it, I’m 
only reminding you of it. You waited for me to express 
my desire ; but I didn't express my desire, I suppressed 
it, because I wanted to spare you even the faintest sort of 
fatigue or annoyance. The thing I do complain of is this : 
First, that you appear deliberately to have shut your 
heart against me, to have hardened yourself against me, 
so that you haven’t given me — all I ask for — a fair chance 
to win you, or yourself a fair chance to be won. You 
seem to have made up your mind beforehand that you 
will deliberately prevent any particle of liking or fondness 
for me, not to speak of passionate love, taking root in your 
heart. All I’ve done, and all I’ve refrained from doing, 
don’t appear to have made any impression of any kind 
upon you. You have simply set to work with might and 
main to freeze yourself toward me. I must say I think 
I’m justified in complaining of that.” 

“ If it were true, yes, you would be justified hi com- 
plaining. But it is not true. I told you before we were 
married that I did not love you, that I never could love 


214 


MEA CULPA . 


you. You ought not to llave married me, if you could not 
be satisfied with that. I appreciate deeply all your kind- 
ness to me this winter, all your forbearance. But I can’t 
love you. It is no more possible for me to force a feeling, 
in my heart, than to force myself to grow an inch in 
stature.” 

The blood rushed to his face, and he cried out, “ That’s 
what makes me furious. I say that is downright child- 
ish folly. Nobody asks you to force a feeling in your 
heart. On the contrary, all I ask is that you will let your 
heart alone, let it follow its natural impulses. It isn’t in 
nature for a woman to remain indifferent to a man who 
loves her as I love you, who .is as kind to her, as untiring 
in his devotion to her, as I am to you. The trouble is 
that you’re forcing your heart in the other direction. Let 
your heart alone, give your heart a chance. That’s all I 
ask. Why, you couldn’t help loving me, if you only 
wouldn’t try not to. It makes me furious. Isn’t it your 
duty to love your husband ? Isn’t it his right to demand 
your love ? You say you can’t force yourself to love him. 
Well, I tell you that if the man is the sort of man I am, 
kind and devoted, and — I use your own words — forbear- 
ing and patient, if he lays his life and his heart at your 
feet as I do, I tell you you can’t help loving him, unless 
you make a deliberate effort not to. And that’s what 
you’re doing, and that’s one of the things that I complain 
of.” 

He was very much excited. He spoke in a very loud 
voice, and very vehemently. What could I answer ? I 
looked out of the window, and held my tongue. 

“Well? well? Have you nothing to say?” he de- 
manded. 

“ I can’t say any more than I have said. I am not 
forcing my heart in any way. I can’t love you. I may 
esteem you and respect you, but I can’t love you. I told 


MATRIMONY. 


215 


you I couldn’t at tlie outset. I told you you were storing up 
a disappointment for yourself. Why did you marry me ? ” 

Again the blood rushed to his face, staining it almost 
purple. He bit his lips, his eyes flashed, and he cried 
out, “ By God ! Don’t you ask me that again, or I’ll do 
something we’ll both be sorry for. I talk to you as if 
you were a sensible woman, and reason with you till I’m 
black in the face, and then I ask you what you have to 
answer, and you simply go back, like a little deaf, dumb, 
imbecile infant, and repeat what you said in the begin- 
ning, letter for letter, for all the world as if you hadn’t 
heard a word that I had spoken. You — you ought to be 
taken out and whipped.” 

“ Why don’t you take me out and whip me ? ” I asked. 
I also was somewhat angry now. 

“ You’d better not tempt me to. Perhaps I will,” he 
retorted, nodding his head threateningly, and looking 
wickedly at me from his deep-set little eyes. 

After which we were both silent for -a while. 

By and by he began again, very quietly. . . . 

“Of course I ought not to have said that, and I offer 
you my apologies. I’m sincerely sorry for it ; but you 
infuriated me, and I didn’t realize what I was doing. I’ll 
say no more now about your loving me. I’ll simply wait, 
and try, and hope. If you’ll only give yourself and me a 
chance, I am sure you must come to love me in the end. 
But now there’s something else I want to talk to you 
about ; and that’s the way you mope. Here you have 
everything in this world that a reasonable human being- 
can ask for of the gods. You’ve got wealth, and all that 
wealth can buy ; you’ve got a magnificent title, and a high 
place in the best society of Europe ; you’re not very 
strong, perhaps, but you’ve got no real disease, and on 
the whole you’re blessed with health as good as that of 
most people ; your time is all your own, to do with as 


216 


MEA CULPA. 


you please ; you’ve got a husband who loves you like a 
dog, and whose only purpose in life is to make you hap- 
py ; if any woman ever had reason to be contented with 
her lot, to thank heaven for her lot, you have. And yet, 
see. Day after day you go about with a rueful counte- 
nance, and a whining voice, and pathetic eyes, to all ap- 
pearances miserably and morbidly wretched. Now, I 
complain that that is unreasonable, and ungrateful, and 
unworthy of you. You have no right to nurse misery, 
and refuse comfort. It’s your duty to enjoy" and be 
thankful for the good things that heaven has vouchsafed 
you. And I say that if you go on like this, you’ll deserve 
to have some real misfortune "happen to you, just to pun- 
ish you for your ingratitude.” 

I did not answer. 

“ Well, will you do me the honor of answering me ? ” 
he demanded. 

“ I have nothing to answer. I was not aware that I 
had troubled you with any expression of my griefs, if I 
have griefs ? ” 

“ No, you haven’t ; and that’s just the point. You go 
about with a dismal countenance, but you never speak. 
Now, I say that if you have no griefs, then you’d better 
try to be and to look a little more cheerful. And if you 
have griefs, then I think it’s my right to know what they 
are. I say you have no occasion for any griefs ; but 
apparently you’re eaten up by them, all the same ; and 
now I demand to hear what they are. Good heavens, how 
many women in this world would like to change places 
with you ! ” 

“ If I have griefs, they are not ones that I can talk 
about. I did not know that my countenance had been 
dismal. I’ll try to alter it.” 

“It isn’t your countenance that I complain of, except 
as your countenance reflects your heart. I say you have 


MATRIMONY. 


217 


every possible reason to be light-hearted and happy. 
And if you’re not that, if there is any deep and mysterious 
sorrow gnawing at your vitals ” — this in a tone of irony 
— “ I have a right to know what it is.” 

“ I do not think there is any deep or mysterious sor- 
row gnawing at my vitals. But if I am not exuberantly 
happy, I can’t help it. One can’t be happy or unhappy 
at will, any more than one can be hungry or thirsty. At 
least I can’t.” 

“ Well, you wait. Perhaps some day you’ll really 
have something to cry about. Then you will look back 
at this time, and wish with all your might that you’d 
realized how well off you were. Yes, by Jove, you’re ex- 
actly like a child. You don’t appear to have any more 
mind or reasoning faculty than a six-year-old infant. I 
might as well argue with an infant. Yes, by God! I 
was right. A whipping would do you good. It would 
be the only way of appealing to you, just as it’s the only 
way of appealing to a child. It would set your blood 
circulating, and it would take your mind off your imagi- 
nary, manufactured sorrows, to make acquaintance with a 
little genuine pain.” 

“ Thank you,” I returned. 

“ Well, now, then, I ask you once for all, will you tell 
me what it is ? If you’ve got any grief of any kind in 
your bosom, I demand to be told what it is.” 

“ I have nothing to tell you.” 

“ God damn you ! ” he screamed, his rage suddenly 
getting the mastery of him. “I believe you are still 
thinking of that starved cur of an American painter. If 
you are, by God, I advise you to put the thought out of 
your head, or there’ll be trouble.” 

I sprang to my feet, and made for the door of the little 
Pullman compartment in which we were travelling. But 
he placed himself before me. 


213 


MEA CULPA. 


“ No, you may just sit down again where you were,” he 
said. “ If I want to talk to you, I think you may do me 
the honor to listen to me. There’s no use your standing 
there. You don’t leave this compartment till I’m ready 
to let you.” 

“ Oh, very well. If you resort to force. Of course you 
are stronger than I am,” I answered and resumed my 
seat. 

“ Well, now, if you’re ready we may talk,” said he. 
“And I want you to understand to begin with that I 
meant no offence to you by what I said about your young 
American painter. I spoke hotly, because you angered 
me ; but you have no ground for taking offence. I will 
say this much for you at once : I know you are the soul 
of honor, and that you would never do anything to injure 
me. So far as that’s concerned, I’d be perfectly willing 
to leave you alone with him on a desert island ; I know 
you’d never be guilty of doing anything wrong ; you’ve 
got too much honor, and too much pride and self-respect. 
But what I want to impress upon you is this : that you 
can injure me just as much by feeling and thinking, as you 
can by doing. I’m your husband, and your husband is 
entitled to demand of you not only that you should keep 
yourself faithful to him with your body, but also that you 
should be faithful to him in thought and feeling. Now, 
I submit it to you in all fairness, if it’s your American 
painter who’s standing between you and me, who’s pre- 
venting you from giving me your love, isn’t it due to me 
that you should put the thought of him entirely out of 
your mind ? There, I have spoken to you reasonably and 
kindly ; I expect a reasonable answer.” 

“I will not answer you. I will not have anything to 
say to you. You have insulted me and outraged me in 
the most cowardly manner ; and you have compelled me 
\ .by force, against my will, to sit here and listen to you. 


MATRIMONY. 


219 


But you cannot compel me to answer you. I have 
nothing to say to you except this : that, after the way in 
which you have spoken to me and treated me to-day, I 
despise you.” 

“You hell-cat ! ” he cried, and struck me across the 
face. 


II. 


I wish most earnestly in making this confession to ex- 
tenuate nothing, and to set down nothing in malice. I 
have not recounted the foregoing scene for the purpose 
of casting discredit upon Prince Leonticlieff, or of excul- 
pating myself. Indeed, I realize perfectly well that I 
was by no means entirely blameless, that perhaps I was 
as much to blame as he was. I can see that my attitude, 
my conduct, and my speech must have been extremely 
exasperating to him ; that I ought, in all right and jus- 
tice, to have met him in a kindlier, friendlier, more sym- 
pathetic spirit. I can imagine that if I had done so, he on 
his side would have behaved differently, and things from 
that time forth might have gone better with us, instead 
of worse. No, I do not wish to excuse myself, or to 
prejudice him. Whether he was to blame, or I was to 
blame, or we were equally to blame, what happened hap- 
pened ; and to tell what happened, honestly and plainly, 
not to assign the blame for it, is the task I have set my- 
self. He insulted me, and struck me, and that was all 
wrong ; but I had infuriated him, and that was all wrong 
too ; so perhaps it was six of one and half a dozen of the 
other. 

But, though I think that to-day, at this distance, I can 
take a fair and reasonable view of it, at the time I could 
do nothing of the kind. 

If I had been able then, as I am now, to make allow- 
ances for him, and to appreciate my own share of the 
responsibility, doubtless we might have forgiven each 


MATRIMONY. 


221 


other, our quarrel might have served to clear the air be- 
tween us, and we might have begun our life anew, upon 
a better footing, a more thorough understanding. But, 
as I say, I could do nothing of the kind. The blow he 
struck me seemed to set my brain on fire ; I was con- 
sumed by a wild, unutterable pain and rage and hatred ; 
I could think of nothing else, I could feel nothing else. 
I clinched my fists, and looked at him, and if wishes 
could have killed, he would have died on the spot. It 
was well perhaps that there were no more deadly weapons 
within my reach. 

I did not speak to him again till after our arrival in 
London, at Salchester House. At first, for a long while, 
he himself did not speak. His bearing after his explo- 
sion was that of a wronged superior being, who had been 
compelled, to his regret, to resort to extreme measures. 
It seemed to say, “ There ! You see ! I have had to be 
severe with you. I am sorry it came to that, but it was 
your own fault. You drove me to it, you deserved it, 
you made it necessary, you brought it upon yourself. I 
regret not what I did, but the necessity I was under to 
do it. Very like the bearing of a virtuous parent, who 
has been forced to inflict bodily punishment upon his 
erring child. This self-righteous attitude on his part was 
like fuel to the fires of my resentment. Oh, how I hated 
him ! How fiercely my heart burned ! How intensely I 
longed in some way to revenge myself upon him ! How 
it baffled and maddened me to realize that I was abso- 
lutely powerless to do so ! 

But gradually these first violent feelings subsided, giv- 
ing way to a dull aching misery ; a sense of utter desola- 
tion and friendlessness. Here I was, all, all alone with him, 
with this man whom I feared and hated, between whom 
and myself there was no possible ground of understanding 
or sympathy, yet whose wife I was, so that he had to me 


222 


MEA CULPA. 


all the right, and over me all the power, that law and tra- 
dition give a husband ! It seemed to me very awful. It 
filled me with a vague but keen alarm and dread. Oh, if 
I could but see a friendly face, hear a friendly voice; 
anything to break this terrible sense of being alone with 
him ! I thought of my father, thousands of miles away 
in Russia. I thought of Armidis, the only other friend 
I had in the world, virtually just as far away, in Paris. 
And yes — I thought of Julian North ; but that thought 
was as guiltless and as despairing as the thought of one 
who is dead. And then I returned to the actual present 
place and time, and saw myself alone in that railway car- 
riage with Prince Leonticlieff ; and my feeling of friend- 
lessness was bitter beyond expression. 

When we left the train at Calais, and my maid joined 
me, I could have thrown myself into her arms, and kissed 
her, and wept upon her shoulder ; she was the only 
human being in my horizon with whom I could exchange 
a friendly word. 

The Prince left her and me together in the cabin he 
had engaged, during the crossing, and for that hour and 
a half I was almost happy, such relief it gave me to 
escape his presence. 

He broke silence for the first time after we had taken 
our places in the train from Dover. 

“ Come ! don’t you think you have sulked long 
enough ? ” he asked. 

At the sound of his voice, all my violent feelings of 
rage and hatred were instantly revived. I bit my lips, 
and did not speak. I could not have spoken. It was a 
choice between keeping silence, and screaming out. 

“ Now, really, Monica,” he went on, in his softest and 
most plausible accents, “ you are behaving like an un- 
reasonable child. A woman, a mature human being, if 
she has anything on her mind, talks it out ; it’s the part 


MATRIMONY. 


223 


of a silly, stubborn little child just to sit in a corner, and 
pout and sulk and refuse to speak. Come ! let us under- 
stand each other. I struck you. I suppose that’s what 
you’re sulking about, so I’ll admit at once that I struck 
you. Well, I’m sorry I struck you. I’m sorry I had to 
strike you. I don’t believe I struck you hard enough to 
hurt you ; there’s no mark. But I’m sorry all the same. 
The trouble was that you drove me to it. It was the 
only way of moving you, of stirring you up. I’d tried in 
vain to talk to you, to argue with you ; you were deaf. 
I’d exhausted every means of appealing to your intelli- 
gence, and then I struck you. Well, when a woman de- 
liberately behaves like a child, she’s got to expect to be 
treated like one. You did behave like a child ; you’re 
behaving like one now ; and I struck you because that’s 
the only way of getting any satisfaction out of a child. 
However, as I say, I’m sorry. I’m sorry I gave way to 
my impulse. I suppose I ought to have borne with you 
longer. But you have no idea how trying you were. If 
you could see yourself even at this moment ! By Jove, I 
believe very few men would be as patient with you as I 
am.” 

Still I did not speak. I had nothing to say, except 
that I hated him and despised him ; and it seemed to me 
that it would be a condescension on my part to tell him 
that. 

I thought, “ He may talk and talk and talk ; but I will 
not lower myself so far as to utter one syllable in reply.” 

He waited a little; then, “Will you pay me the com- 
pliment of answering me ? ” he demanded. 

Again he waited a moment. At last he gave a short, 
angry laugh. “ By God, I believe you want to make me 
do it again,” he cried. “Well, if you enjoy making a 
sickening idiot of yourself, you may. I won’t trouble my- 
self to notice you,” 


224 


ME A CULPA. 


But at the end of perhaps a half-hour’s dignified silence, 
he began anew. . . . 

“Oh, this is too absurd. What is it that you are 
thinking about, what are you meditating, as you sit there 
with your back up, and your lips stuck out, as silent as -if 
you were dumb ? ” 

He gave me time to reply ; but then, as I did not reply, 
“ Well, have you got a tongue in your head ? I am wait- 
ing to hear what you have to say ? ” 

But I said nothing. 

“ Come ! You’ve got to open your mouth if I have to 
pry it open with a chisel. Do you hear me ? I want to 
know what it is you’ve got on your mind. Whatever it is, 
out with it. If you want to abuse me, abuse me. Say your 
say. Only don’t put on these airs of a tragedy-queen. 
You’ll make me laugh. If you want to curse me, curse 
me viva-voce. If you go on swallowing your venom, it 
may strike in. You’d better spit it out. There ! I’ve 
pleaded with you long enough. I won’t plead with you 
any more. I fall back now upon my rights. I will thank 
you to remember that I’m your husband; and now I 
demand as my right to be told what it is you’re turning 
over in your obstinate little brain.” 

And so from time to time he would renew his efforts 
to make me speak, now imploring, now threatening, now 
arguing, now commanding — while I, it cannot be denied, 
derived a certain malicious satisfaction from the spectacle 
of his impotent annoyance — until we reached Salchester 
House, and I had been shown to my own apartments, and 
supposed myself rid of him for the night. 

But I had not been alone five minutes, when he joined 
me ; opening the door of my dressing-room, which I had 
forgotten to lock, without the formality of rapping. 

He sent my maid away, and then he said to me, “ I am 
not going to bed to-night, I am not going to let you go, 


MATRIMONY. 


225 


until we have had this out. Now the sooner you open 
your lips and speak, the sooner you’ll be left to your 
own devices.” 

He sat down, and settled himself in his chair with the 
effect of a fixture. 

“ Here I sit,” he said, “ until I hear your voice. And 
I can’t allow you to leave the room before me.” 

I looked at him, and I realized with a certain mixture 
of despair and weariness that he would probably be as 
good as his word. 

“ Well ? You wish me to speak. What do you wish 
me to say ? ” I demanded. 

“ Why, look here, Monica ” — dropping his tone of au- 
thority, and becoming persuasive — “ I wish without ran- 
cor or ill-feeling to talk this thing over with you. 
Things have come to a sort of crisis between us, and it’s 
best on all accounts that we should talk our thoughts out, 
and understand each other. I struck you to-day in the 
train. I’ve already told you that I’m sorry I did so. I 
don’t think I struck you hard enough to hurt you, and I 
do think that you deserved it ; but all the same I’ll admit 
at once that it would have been better if I hadn’t struck 
you at all, no matter how lightly, no matter if you did de- 
serve it. There, I’ve made an apology. Now I want to 
know whether you can be generous enough to accept it ? 
You’ve been pouting your lips and brooding over it ever 
since it happened. Now I want to know if you can’t 
drop it, and behave as if it hadn’t occurred ? I’ve apolo- 
gized; it’s for you to forgive.” 

“If you wish me to behave as if it hadn’t occurred, 
why will you persist in talking to me about it? ” I asked. 

“ I talk to you about it because I want to hear you 
talk. I want to know what you have to say. You’ve 
been turning it over and over and over perpetually in 
your brain for the past five hours. You must have made 
15 


226 


ME A CULPA. 


up your mind to something, by this time. I want to 
r know w T hat. I want you to open your lips. I don’t care 
what you say, only say it. Spit it out, instead of swal- 
lowing it. It’s this infernal silence that I can’t stand. 
It frightens me. I don’t know what you mayn’t be medi- 
tating. I don’t dare to leave you alone.” 

“ I have nothing to say to you, nothing whatever. I 
don’t think it would give you any pleasure to hear what I 
think of you ; I don’t wish to expose myself to your vio- 
lence again. At any rate, I will not stoop to recrimina- 
tion with you. You know what has happened as w T ell as 
I do. You understand the situation as well as I do. 
There is nothing to be said. It goes without saying.” 

“Now listen to me for one moment, Monica. I have 
made up my mind to .control myself, and to be very kind 
and patient with you. Therefore I shan’t allow your 
stubbornness or your unfairness to anger me. I will just 
put it to you as from one reasonable being to another, 
whether we hadn’t better talk this thing out, and under- 
stand each other. You say you don’t wish to expose 
yourself to my violence again. That’s a petty and con- 
temptible thing to say, and you ought to be ashamed of 
it. I’ve apologized for my violence, and it isn’t very 
noble of you to taunt me with it. What’s more, if 
you don’t want me to be violent with you, don’t bring 
it upon yourself by acting like a silly child, and mak- 
ing me forget that you’re a woman. You say I 
wouldn’t enjoy hearing your opinion of me. I say, 
yes, I would. No matter how uncomplimentary or unjust 
it may be, I’d infinitely rather hear you speak it out in 
plain words, than have you hold it in, and let it rankle 
and fester and poison our relations. Now, come. You 
see I’m calm and reasonable ; try to be reasonable your- 
self. I don’t understand how you can be so small. Any 
one would suppose you had no more soul than a little 


MATRIMONY. 


227 


tuppenny-ha’penny shopkeeper’s wife. I should think 
with your traditions you could be bigger, more generous. 
There, now ; in all kindness, I beg you to talk it out. 
We never can take up our life again until we have talked 
this thing out, and come to an understanding.” 

“There is nothing to talk out. There is nothing to 
understand. It is very easy for you to sit there and prate 
of patience and kindness and generosity. Is it kind or 
generous of you to force your presence upon me, here in 
my private rooms ? I should think you might be patient, 
you who have all the advantages on your side. I have 
nothing to say to you, except to ask you to leave me. I 
do not think you would stay, if you could know how un- 
welcome you are.” 

He colored up. “I see,” he cried. “ You want to ex- 
asperate me still more, so that I shall say or do some- 
thing else to give you an excuse for posing as an innocent, 
abused woman. Your private rooms, indeed ! I think 
this house is mine, and that I can occupy any part of it I 
please, whenever I please, without asking you. Your 
private rooms ! Why, damn it, you haven’t a stitch of 
clothing on your back that doesn’t belong to me. Yes, I 
see. You want to drive me to the point of making a 
brute of myself. But you can’t do it. I’ve got myself in 
hand.” 

“ Oh, no,” I retorted, “ I don’t think you could make a 
brute of yourself.” 

“ I thought you weren’t going to stoop to recrimina- 
tion ? ” he flung back. 

For awhile after that we were both silent. 

At last, “ Look here, Monica, is there no w'ay by which 
you can be brought to your senses ? ” he asked. “ It stands 
to reason that you’ve made your mind up to something. 
Anyhow, I can see that you have, by the set look in your 
face. Now, I want to know what. The least you can do 


228 


MEA CULPA. 


is to tell me what. I think I am well within my rights 
when I ask to be informed what yon mean to do.” 

“ I have not the faintest objection to telling you what 
I mean to do. Of course you must know that after what 
has happened to-day, I cannot mean to live in the same 
house with you any longer than I can help. I shall stay 
here to-night, and to-morrow I shall start with my maid 
for St. Petersburg, to join my father.” 

“ By Jove, that shows what a thought-reader I am ! 
Do you know, I suspected exactly that. I had a sort of 
presentiment that that was what you were meditating. 
But do you take me for a full-blown lunatic ? Do you 
fancy for one instant that I will allow it ? Do you sup- 
pose I am going to stand still, and let my wife abandon 
me, and make a scandal in the four corners of Europe ? 
"What do you suppose I married you for, if you are not 
to live with me ? Oh, you must think I am a fool ! ” 

“ I don’t know what you married me for, I’m sure. Cer- 
tainly, if you expected me to live with a man who was 
capable of beating me, you deceived yourself. I do not 
intend to expose myself to the risk of a repetition of to- 
day’s experience. I shall leave you, and go to my father. 
As for your allowing or not allowing it, I don’t see how 
you can prevent it.” 

“ Oh, you don’t ! Well, then you’d better invest in a 
pair of spectacles. I do. I see very clearly. I see seve- 
ral ways by which I can prevent it. I could lock you up 
here in your room, if it came to that. You mustn’t allow 
yourself to forget that you happen to be my wife, and that 
the law gives me considerable authority over you. But I 
think I know another way that will be more effective still. 
Beating you, indeed ! You would go away from me, and 
tell people that I had beaten you, and spread the scandal 
of it far and wide. Poor defenceless thing, her husband 
maltreated her, and she had to fly from him, and seek ref- 


MATRIMONY. 


229 


uge with her father ! It takes a woman to pervert the 
truth like that, to lie like that. I struck you a little gen- 
tle blow on the cheek, so light a blow that it hasn’t even 
left a mark ; and now you talk of my having beaten you ! 
You wouldn’t hesitate to tell the world that I had beaten 
you ! Yes, it takes a woman, a small-souled, mean-spirited 
woman. A man would be ashamed. No, no ; I can’t al- 
low it. I couldn’t allow you to leave me under any cir- 
cumstances ; but I must especially forbid it under the act- 
ual ones. You must put your thoughts of flight out of 
your mind.” 

“ You asked me what I intended to do, and I have an- 
swered you. I have no desire to discuss it with you. 
Unless you do lock me up in my room — and I hardly 
think that you will take such an abject advantage of your 
superior strength as that — I shall not stay under your 
roof another day. I may be a mean-spirited woman, but 
I am not so mean-spirited as to go on living in the same 
house with a man who has insulted me as you have done 
to-day. I do not see why you should wish me to do so. 
You must know that there is no danger of my making 
public the indignity to which you have put me. If 
you are not ashamed of it, I am. All I ask is to be 
allowed to leave you, and go to my father. But, as I 
said, whether you allow it or not, I shall do it. That is 
all.” 

“Oh, that’s all, is it? You think that’s all. Very 
good. Now listen to me. I’ll speak very plainly to you 
for about half a minute, and then I’ll give you complete 
liberty to do as you choose. I’ve just got one thing to 
say, and that is this. You pack up your traps, and call 
for your maid, and leave for St. Petersburg, if you like ; I 
won’t stop you ; only there’s one fact you’d better bear in 
mind — before you reach the Bussian frontier, your worthy 
father will be marching with a shaved head in the clirec- 


230 


MEA CULPA. 


tion of Siberia. Don’t allow yourself to forget that. As 
I imagine you have seen, I possess a rather considerable 
influence with the powers that be in my native land, and 
I hold, so to speak, the fate of your venerable parent at 
the points of my ten fingers. A word from me by tele- 
graph would cause his arrest and transportation before he 
knew where he was standing. . . . Don’t allow your- 

self under any circumstances to forget what I’m telling 
you. You see, if you were amenable to reason in the or- 
dinary way, I shouldn’t find it necessary to go into these 
little details ; but in the actual situation it strikes me as 
perhaps the only argument that will be likely to convince 
you. Just remember, whenever you feel in a rebellious 
mood, that I practically possess over your father the 
power of life and death.” 

“What do you mean? ” I cried in terror. “What has 
my father done ? What can you accuse him of ? Oh, I 
don’t believe a word you say. It is simply a threat.” 

“ Well, I’ll tell you how you can test it, and find out to 
your perfect satisfaction whether it’s simply a threat or 
not. Do what you said. Leave for St. Petersburg to- 
morrow morning. And then, when you arrive there, in- 
quire for your father’s whereabouts. I fancy you’ll find 
that he’s departed for our pretty little Asiatic colony of 
political damned fools.” 

“ Will you tell me what my father has done ? What 
has he done, to place himself in such peril ? What can 
you allege against him, to cause him to be arrested? 
What can you prove ? ” 

“ No, I won’t tell you. It would tire me. All I’ll say 
is this, that your father is not an incarnation of discretion, 
and that a very little indiscretion goes a long way in 
Russia. Then, you see, besides, I’m something of a 
power in Russia, and I had more or less to go bail for 
his good behavior when I procured his pardon, and an 


MATRIMONY. 


231 


accusation of any sort from me wouldn’t need to be 
bolstered up with any very great amount of proof.” 

“ Very good. I shall warn my father. I shall tell him 
to leave Kussia at once.” 

“ As you please, of course ; but I wouldn’t, if I were 
you. You’d only succeed in making things unpleasant for 
him. I’m going to send a little telegram to St. Petersburg 
to-night instructing certain people, upon whose obedience 
I can rely, to keep an eye upon your father’s movements, 
and at the first sign of a disposition on his part to leave 
the country, to clap him into jail.” 

“ Oh, I don’t believe that you will do anything so base. 
What is the use, after all ? Why should you object to letting 
me leave you ? Why shouldn’t you allow me to go to my 
father, for a visit ? Why should you fear any scandal ? 
What could be more natural than that I should go for a 
visit to my father? Nobody shall ever leam from me 
what has happened to-day. I promise you that. Why 
should you wish me to go on living in your house ? 
We’re utterly unsuited to each other. You can’t be much 
happier in it than I am. It has all been a mistake — our 
marriage — everything — a tenable mistake. Why can’t 
you let me go away ? ” 

“ Why, because I love you so, my dear. Because your 
presence is a constant joy to me. Because, so long as I 
can see you every day, and w t oo you, I can hope to win 
you ; whereas, if you were away from me, you might for- 
get me ; I might lose what little ground I have gained.” 

He looked at me with eyes that made my blood ran 
cold ; and the inflexion of his voice sent a shudder through 
me. 

“Come!” he said, stretching out his arms. “We’ll 
say no more about it. Let’s kiss and make up.” 

I shrank away from him, and tried to suppress a tremor 
in my voice as I answered, “Yes, I quite agree with you. 


232 


MEA CULPA. 


We’ll say no more about it. We have said as much as is 
at all necessary. Will you be good enough to leave me 
now? I’m very tired.” 

He took a quick step forward, and caught me in his 
arms. Then he began to kiss me, on the cheeks and on 
the forehead. I put up my hands, and covered my lips. 

“ Oh, how cold you are ! ” he complained. “ What are 
you made of ? Not flesh and blood, I’ll be bound ! . . . 

Oh, yes, I’ll leave you now. Only, remember what I have 
told you. I meant it, every word of it. Your father’s 
liberty depends upon a nod from me, and it is altogether 
at your option whether I shall give that nod or not. Good- 
night.” 

That explains why I could not separate from the Prince, 
why I had to go on living with him, insupportable as our 
life together had become. 


III. 


After that tilings went steadily from bad to worse be- 
tween us, and from worse to worst. It is a miserable 
story, sordid and disgraceful in all its aspects ; it makes 
my cheeks tingle with shame to think of telling it ; and I 
shall tell no more of it than I must. Sometimes, when I 
reflect upon it, it seems as if it had been all my fault, or 
chiefly my fault, at least ; but at other times I feel that it 
was inevitable from the beginning — that nothing else 
could possibly have resulted from such a wretchedly un- 
natural and ill-assorted marriage. 

At first, for a while, it was evident that Prince Leon- 
ticheff desired and hoped for a reconciliation. He made 
no absolute overtures for one, but his speech, his bearing, 
everything, showed that he desired one. I, however, not 
only would not, I could not meet him half way. A deep 
sense of resentment toward him, a violent dread and loath- 
ing of him, had got kindled in my heart. Quite without 
reference to my will, they burned hotter and fiercer as 
time went on, instead of cooling and dying out. 

The trouble was that every day fresh fuel was added to 
them, because I had to live with him. If he had allowed 
me to leave him, and go to my father, I dare say it 
would have been different. But by the employment 
of means that seemed to me cruel and cowardly to the 
last degree, he had compelled me to remain with him. 
He held my father as a hostage ! That constraint, that 
annihilation of my personal liberty, and the method of it, 
stung me with a furious sense of outrage and injustice. 


234 


ME A CULPA 


And then, joined to that, my constant feeling of his 
nearness to me, my consciousness that I was living in his 
house and on his bounty, the necessity I was under fre- 
quently to meet him, speak with him, listen to him, were 
like continual reopenings of the wound, which kept it 
sore. 

Was it my fault ? or was it inevitable ? 

Perhaps it was both. It was the fault of my tempera- 
ment, of my character, no doubt ; but then, my tempera- 
ment and my character were entailed upon me, and I 
could no more help them than I could help the color of 
my hair. 

At all events, as I have said, things went steadily 
from bad to worse with us. Steadily my hatred of him 
seemed to grow bitterer and more violent, rankling deep 
in my heart with an intensity of pain that was almost 
physical. I cannot express the sick abhorrence that filled 
me and chilled me when I thought of him, nor the thrill 
of fear and repulsion that I experienced when I would 
hear his voice or his footstep, or when I would see his 
face. 

Yes ; if he would only have consented to let me go 
away from him, I am sure it would have been different. 
But the thought that by an intimidation more galling, 
more humiliating, and more efficacious^ than main force, 
I was compelled to live with him in spite of myself, was 
like a constant irritating thorn in my brain; and our 
daily meetings were like daily thrustings of the thorn in 
deeper still. It came to the point where I could not look 
at him, but my hatred burned in my eyes ; where I could 
not speak to him, but it vibrated in my voice. And 
then, my knowledge of its hopelessness. . . ! That 

it must go on and on like this forever ! Until I died, un- 
less . . . unless he died first ! That no escape from 

it was imaginable, except in the death of one of us ! It was 


MATRIMONY. 


235 


all very wrong and terrible, but if I am to tell the truth, 
I must tell it, again and again I caught myself saying to 
myself, “ Oh, I wish that he was dead ! There is no hope 
possible for me so long as he lives. Oh, I wish that he 
was dead ! ” 

It was the first season I had ever passed in London, 
that summer of 1886. Of course we were very busy, 
going and receiving. I was presented at the next draw- 
ing-room held after our arrival ; then followed a breath- 
less whirl of dinners and dances, routs, rowdies, theatri- 
cals, I know not what all. For a while, as I have said, 
Prince Leonticlieff ’s attitude toward me was tacitly con- 
ciliatory ; but gradually, as he saw no sign of relenting on 
my part, his patience began to fail ; it was plain that he 
was growing angry and angrier ; till, finally, so to speak, 
the air between us became heavy with suppressed ill-feel- 
ing, and I lived in perpetual terror of an explosion. 

At last, one night toward the end of June, the explo- 
sion came. We had given a dinner, and a reception after 
it. Then, when our guests had gone, and I was about to 
retire to my own apartments, he said, “ I should like a 
few minutes’ talk with you. Come into the library.” 

In the library he announced, “ I am leaving London in 
the morning, to go to Russia. It appears that malignant 
typhus has broken out in the south-east, among my peas- 
antry, and they are dying by the hundreds. I’m going 
down there to see what it is like. I shall probably send 
some letters about it to the Beacon . I shall leave in the 
morning before you are awake.” 

He paused, and waited in manifest expectation that I 
would say something to show admiration of his courage, 
or concern for the danger to which he was about to ex- 
pose himself. But — to my shame, perhaps, it should be 
acknowledged — the only thought or feeling that his an- 
nouncement aroused in me was one of relief at the pros- 


236 


MEA CULPA. 


pect of a period of separation from him. He waited for 
me to speak until the silence became painful, when, very 
tactlessly, I asked, “ How long will you be away ? ” 

He looked at me with a smile that was grim and con- 
temptuous, nodding his head. At the end of a minute 
he uttered a dry little laugh. 

“ Ha ! That’s just what I expected. I tell you that I 
am going to a pestilence region, carrying my life in my 
hands ; and all you have to say is, how long shall I be 
gone ? . . . That’s the only aspect of the affair that 

interests my wife. Well, I shall be gone about a month. 
Perhaps a little longer, perhaps not quite so long. We 
are engaged for a cruise on the Tchemobog in August, and 
I shall of course be back in time to start on that. I’ll 
keep you informed of my movements by telegraph.” 

“And you wish me to stay on here in Salchester 
House ? ” I queried, more for the sake of saying some- 
thing than because I had any doubt or curiosity. 

“ Why, I don’t see but that you’ll have to. We’ve in- 
vited people for a good many evenings ahead, and we’ve 
accepted a good many invitations. I don’t see but you 
will have to stay here to do the honors.” 

“ Yes, of course,” I assented. 

For several minutes neither of us spoke. 

At length I rose, as if to withdraw, and asked, “ Is that 
ah?” 

“ Well, as I told you, I shall leave in the morning with- 
out seeing you. This is the last occasion we shall have to 
talk together till I come back. If you have anything to 
say to me, you’d better say it now.” 

“I have nothing to say to you.” 

Again there was a minute of silence. I did not look 
at him, but somehow I knew that he had colored with 
anger, and that his eyes were fixed with no friendly gaze 
upon my face. Presently, still without looking at him, I 


MATRIMONY. 237 

began to move toward the door. Just as I had got my 
hand upon the knob of it. . . . 

“ Come back here ! ” he cried out. 

Each word was short, loud, sudden, and big with pas- 
sion. The sound of them struck me like a blow. I stood 
still, trembling, but I did not take my hand from the 
door-knob, nor turn around. 

“ Let go that door-knob, and come back here,” he cried 
again. 

Then, as I still did not move, “Do you hear?” he 
screamed. 

But I had no power to obey him. I was transfixed to 
the spot by fright. 

Next moment he grasped my arms, dragged me back 
into the room, and half pushed, half flung, me into a 
chair. 

“Now, then, you may just sit there till I tell you to 
get up,” he said. 

His face was terrible, purple and swollen with con- 
gested blood. His eyes were lowering and vicious, and 
he kept them half closed as he looked at me. 

“ By God ! I wish a stranger could be present to see 
the way you carry yourself toward me,” he said. “ He’d 
wonder at my patience. He’d wonder I didn’t kill you.” 

He strode backward and forward through the room for 
a bit, then came to a halt before me. 

“ You may have nothing to say to me,” he went on, 
“ but I have something to say to you, and I’ll thank you 
to give me your attention while I say it.” 

He drew up a chair, and sat down, facing me, with his 
knees touching mine. 

“Now,” he said, “I called you in here to-night, not 
only to tell you that I was going to Russia, but also be- 
cause I wanted to give you a chance, before I went, to 
apologize to me for the manner in which you’ve seen fit 


238 


ME A CULPA . 


to demean yourself ever since that day in the train coming 
from Nice. I’ve stood your damned airs and nonsense 
just as long as I intend to. Now you may beg my par- 
don, and mend your ways. Or else, by God, I’ll make 
you repent it ! There’s a limit even to my good nature, 
and you’ve reached it. Now you may open your mouth 
and talk. I don’t intend to let you sulk and mope about 
this house any longer.” 

“ What do you wish me to apologize for ? ” I queried. 
“ Do you wish me to beg pardon for the blow you struck 
me in the train ? ” 

He sprang to his feet in a fury, and shook his fist at 
me. 

“You petty-minded, mean-spirited shrew ! ” he cried. 
“ Good heavens, how can any human being, with human 
blood in her veins, nurse and cherish rancor as she does ! 
It takes a little contemptible penny-counting school-mis- 
tress, by Jove, to be as small as that ! Oh, good God, 
why did I ever lift you out of the squalor in which I 
found you, to make a lady of you, you who have the soul 
of a fish- wife ? I’ll just give you one piece of advice, 
however, and you’d better bear it in mind. Don’t you 
throw that incident in the railway carriage in my teeth 
again, don’t you taunt me with it again, or I’ll repeat it 
with compound interest.” 

“ Brute ! ” I muttered. In my anger, the word came 
out independently of any volition on my part. 

“ Hold your tongue,” he shouted. “ If you take to 
calling names, I may meet you and beat you on your own 
ground. Now what I have to say to you is this. Hith- 
erto I’ve been your friend ; I’ve put up with your moods 
and your tantrums, and borne your insults, and done 
everything that a friend could do to smooth your path 
for you, and make you comfortable and contented. But 
now you’ve gone too far. From this night on, you may 


MATRIMONY. 


239 


count me as your enemy. Look out for me. You hate 
me. Well, I’ll return the compliment henceforward, and 
hate you. Look out for me. You’ve spurned my love 
till you’ve tired it out. Now beware of my hatred. I 
tell you, until you come to me grovelling on your knees 
and licking the dust at my feet, and fawn like a dog to 
be taken back in my good graces, you’d better be on your 
guard. You’ve gone too far ; you drive me to take re- 
prisals. You’ll find I’m a good hater.” 

“ Thank you,” I replied. “ I much prefer your hatred 
to what you call your love. It is not quite so loath- 
some.” 

“So? Ah, well, time will show. I think your opinion 
on that score will be more valuable a year hence than it 
is at present. I think I can lead you a dance. I will 
pay you back in your own coin, and I’ll pay you a sover- 
eign for your every shilling. The fun of it all is, of 
course, that you’ll have to be entirely submissive, and to 
do everything pretty much as I wish you to, because you 
must never allow yourself to forget that I hold your 
father’s fate in my hands as a sort of bond or guarantee 
for your good behavior. That’s what makes the situation 
pretty. The circumstance that your father will have to 
suffer for any little sins of yours, will doubtless have the 
effect of keeping you within bounds.” 

“ You coward ! ” I said between my teeth. 

“Faugh ! You ! ” he retorted ; I cannot repeat his 

word. He spat into my face. 

It all seems very petty and contemptible, I suppose, 
and unworthy of being recorded. But at the time it was 
of the utmost hideous seriousness to me, — to us, perhaps 
I ought to say, — and I record it as part of the explana- 
tion of the unquestionably grave events that ultimately 
followed. 


240 


MEA CULPA. 


Up to this point, I think I have been able, in telling 
my story, to take a reasonably impartial view of it, — to 
make allowances for Prince Leonticheff, and to recognize 
my own share of the blame. But beyond this point I 
cannot do so. When I think of the things that happened 
during the next four years, my heart burns again with 
rage and mortification, I hate him again with as great 
intensity as if he were still visible before me in the 
flesh, and I cannot help thinking that it was all his fault, 
all, all his fault. Because he forced me to live with him ! 
Why could he not have allowed me to go away? Then 
the things that I must recount would never have come to 
pass ; separated, we could have lived our own lives in 
peace. But he forced me to live with him. Why ? He 
must have known that I could never forgive him his last 
outrage ; that after that, all possibility of reconciliation 
between us was destroyed. And yet he forced me to go 
on living with him, so that every circumstance of my life 
operated to keep my wound open ; every circumstance 
and condition of my life served to remind me of my griev- 
ance. He forced me to live with him ; and I cannot see 
but he alone was responsible for the consequences of his 
doing so. I believe his reason for so forcing me was 
simply this : I had worn out his patience, I had angered 
him profoundly, he had come to reciprocate my hatred, 
and now he wished to have me constantly in his house, 
constantly under his hand, so that he might, as he had 
said, take reprisals ; he forced me to live with him so 
that he might torture me, and thus taste the sweetness of 
revenge. Of course, when it is a question of the motives 
of so unusual a person as Prince Leonticheff, I may possi- 
bly be mistaken ; but I have thought and thought, and 
that is the only theory of his conduct which seems to me 
to explain it. 

But if I had hated him before, conceive how I hated 


MATRIMONY. 


241 


him now ! Now that it had come to open war ; now that 
in cold blood he had determined to “ lead me a dance ! ” 
With a hatred that was all the more hot and furious, be- 
cause it was impotent and dumb — because there was noth- 
ing it could say or do to satisfy itself. Here I was, com- 
pelled to live with him ; compelled to live with this great 
coarse hulking red-faced boor and bully ; compelled to 
pass my life in his company, to eat at the same table with 
him, to travel with him, to be his property, his slave, his 
thing ; to sacrifice all privacy to him, to hold myself in 
constant readiness for his commands, to come when he 
called, to submit to his every appetite or caprice ; com- 
pelled to play the wife, the wife, to this man who had 
struck me, who had spat upon my face, who had crushed 
and outraged every instinct of pride, of sensitiveness, of 
self-respect, that I possessed ! I was constrained to live 
and move and have my being in an atmosphere that was 
poisoned for me by his presence. The mere sight of him, 
the mere thought of him, made me recoil and shudder 
and grow sick at heart ; the mere sound of his voice filled 
me with dismay ; and yet I was his wife, he owned me, I 
had to live with him ! Is it wonderful that my hatred of 
him gained in virulence ? There was nothing I could do 
to escape him, nothing I could do to disarm him, I was 
completely, absolutely, in his power, at his mercy ; utterly 
helpless to defend or to avenge myself. How could I help 
hating him with increasing fierceness? Of course, of 
course, my hatred was an evil thing, evil and shameful ; I 
do not mean to justify it or excuse it ; what I do mean is 
that it was also an inevitable thing, and not a thing for 
which I was responsible ; I mean that I could not help it, 
that, evil as it was, I could no more help it than I could 
have helped falling sick of a fever if I had been exposed 
to contagion, than I could have helped bleeding if he had 
cut my flesh with a knife. And I mean, too, that it was 
1G 


242 


MEA CULPA. 


a thing of his own making ; that he kept my hatred alive 
by daily feeding it, that every day he injected a fresh 
supply of its poison into my blood. If he had allowed 
me to live away from him, I should not have hated him ; 
I might even perhaps have forgotten what he had made 
me suffer, and have forgiven him. 

What he had made me suffer ! It had seemed a good 
deal at the time ; but it was nothing, nothing, to what he 
made me suffer now. It is needless that I should tell the 
story in detail. I shall say enough when I say that he 
seemed to bring all his powers of invention upon the task 
he had set himself, the task of “ leading me a dance ; ” the 
task of annoying me, humiliating me, hurting me. He 
had come to hate me ; that was not to be wondered at ; 
we were mutually antipathetic ; and his hatred of me was 
as natural as my hatred of him. But there was this dif- 
ference : he had the upper hand ; he could wreak his ha- 
tred upon me; and he did not neglect to do so. “You 
will find that I am a good hater,” he had warned me ; 
his warning proved to be quite true. 

Certain of the measures that he took to the end of 
causing me pain, were, however, rather ineffectual. I sup- 
pose I had become dulled and hardened ; at all events, I did 
not mind especially when he would bring one of his mis- 
tresses to stay in the house, and force me to do the hon- 
ors to her, abusing me in her presence, and making love 
to her in mine ; I could not take that sort of thing very 
tragically, it was too despicable, it was beneath contempt. 
I did not mind especially, either, when he would set one 
of his male parasites on to make love to me. What I suf- 
fered most from was the general necessity I was under to 
live with him, and the sense of isolation and defenceless- 
ness that it engendered ; the feeling that my life was being 
stolen from me and wasted, a waste as hopeless as it was 
purposeless, “ like water spilled upon the ground, which 


MATRIMONY . 


243 


cannot be gathered up again ; ” and the loss of self- 
respect that must befall anyone who is conscious of lead- 
ing an empty, useless life — the humiliation, the despair. 
After that, the thing I suffered most from was his talk. 
I can give no idea how nauseous it was. He let himself 
go ; and in my presence, and sometimes in my presence 
and in that of others as well, he would say tilings so im- 
possible in their vileness that I cannot write them down, 
so incredible in their vileness that I cannot conceive a 
human being even thinking them in the silence of his 
own brain, much less giving them utterance before a 
woman. Some Russians are said to be like that. He 
appeared to derive an exquisite satisfaction from the 
spectacle of the horror and disgust he contrived thus to 
inspire in me, and to enjoy keenly my inability to silence 
him, or to leave his presence. Among other things, he 
wrote a set of verses — oh, but a set verses ! — in the Rus- 
sian language. Then, one day, when he and I were lunch- 
ing together en tete-a-tete , he insisted upon reading them 
aloud to me, in the hearing of the servants. Of course 
the servants were English and did not understand a sylla- 
ble of Russian ; but that fact did not mitigate the miser- 
able shame and sickness that I felt. At this moment 
the coarse brutal laughter with which he punctuated his 
reading, seems to vibrate again in my ears. 

N But I cannot dwell on this ; the mere memory of it is 
too painful. From his talk I think I suffered more even 
than from his blows, though whenever he became particu- 
larly angry with me now, he did not hesitate to cuff or 
kick me. At the time, a blow from him would infuriate 
me far more than a word ; on a hundred occasions, when 
he struck me, if I had had a weapon, and if I had been 
his equal in physical strength, I do not doubt I would 
have killed him ; but looking upon it all from this dis- 
tance, I find myself forgetting the blows, whereas the 


244 


MEA CULPA. 


words come back to me with the same venemous force 
they had when they were spoken. . . . And always, 

always, he held over my head that threat of sending my 
father to Siberia, to tame me with, he said, when I mani- 
fested a rebellious spirit. 

So I may pass over four years, and come to the spring 
of 1890, when again we were in London, at Salchester 
House. As I have said, a few days after our arrival he 
went away, not telling me where he was going, but prom- 
ising to be gone a fortnight or three weeks. 


PAET Y. 


ABMIDIS. 





I. 


Among all the people whom I knew in London, there 
was no one I liked better than Miss Clotilde Wynn, the 
poet, who lived in Kensington Gore, in a house whose 
windows overlooked the Park. A few days after Prince 
LeontichefFs departure, I went to her in the afternoon 
for a cup of tea. While we were talking together I began 
to notice a little water-color drawing, in a passepartout 
frame, that stood on a table at my side. It represented 
the head and shoulders of a young man, twenty years old 
perhaps, with a thick, waving mane of brown hair, and a 
face of such unusual and exquisite beauty that I supposed 
it must be a fancy-sketch, the translation of a painter’s 
ideal, and not a veritable portrait. Yet something in it, 
I could not tell what, teased me with a sense of familiar- 
ity, until, all at once, I exclaimed, “Why, that is just 
how Armidis must have looked thirty years ago. Armi- 
dis the composer.” 

“ Why, but it is Armidis ! ” cried Miss Wynn. “ Do 
you know him ? ” 

I answered that he was one of my best and dearest 
friends. 

“ And one of mine, too,” said she. “ I knew him when 
I was a girl. Have you seen him lately ? ” 

“I have not seen him since my marriage — four years 
ago.” 

“ Why, but you know he is in town, of course ? ” 

“No? I had not known it. Is it true? If it is, 
nothing, nothing could give me greater happiness than to 


248 


MEA CULPA. 


see him. What is his address ? I will write to him. It 
is strange he has not come to call on me. He must have 
known I was here.” 

“ He has been living in London about a year. I see a 
good deal of him. He drops in to drink a cup of tea 
three or four times a week. You know I go out very 
little. Indeed, he said he was coming this afternoon ; 
but I don’t know that that is any reason for expecting 
him.” 

“ Oh, I hope he will, I hope he will,” I said. My heart 
was trembling. The prospect of seeing him, though it 
was altogether a pleasant one, agitated me very much. 

“But, my dear, you are pale,” cried Miss Wynn. There’s 
a history. Tell it to me at once.” 

“No, there is no history. Only I saw a great deal of 
him when I was a girl in Paris. He was kind to me, and 
I was fond of him. And now, the thought of seeing him, 
it is so sudden and unexpected — you can understand . . .” 

A servant entered, and announced, “ Mr. Armidis.” 

Next moment Armidis himself, his face all smiles, and 
both of his fat hands extended, was bearing down upon us. 

I was standing with my back toward the window, so 
that he could not have recognized me. At the sight of 
him, the tears sprang to my eyes ; I could not help it ; I 
was weeping in silence while he made his obeisance to the 
lady of the house. 

Then Miss Wynn said, with a travesty of ceremonious- 
ness, “I wish to present you to her Serene Highness 
the Princess LeontichefF. I think you have had the honor 
before.” 

Armidis gave a little start, and slowly turned his 
face toward me. All the color and all the sparkle had 
faded from it. It was white and grave and questioning. 
I still stood with my back to the window, so that my own 
face was always in shadow. 


ARMIDIS. 


249 


He did not speak for a minute. At last lie said very 
low, “ Not Monica? ” 

“Yes, Monica,” I answered, also very low, and impul- 
sively I moved toward him. 

“ Monica ! ” he repeated ; it was like a sob. 

“ Aren’t you going to shake hands with me ? ” I asked, 
putting out both of mine, and trying to smile down my 
tears. 

“ Oh, my child ! ” The words were scarcely audible. 
He took my hands, and held me off, and looked into my 
face with eyes that were eloquent of his emotion. By 
and by he drew a long breath, like a sigh ; and his eyes 
became radiant with one of his bright, beautiful smiles ; 
and “ There, there ! Dry your tears,” he said. “ The 
awful moment' has passed ; and now we may be quite 
commonplace and friendly again. I knew you were in 
London; I saw your arrival noted in the newspapers. 
Distinguished personage ! But it hadn’t occurred to me 
that we might meet. I, poor Bohemian, I am not of your 
world, you know.” 

“ I think you might have come to see me,” I said. 

“ I didn’t dare. Park Lane is so grand. Besides, dis- 
cretion is the better part of friendship; and though I 
knew you in your old earth-bound existence, I didn’t 
want to haunt you in your present state of exaltation. I 
feel that I must be something like a ghost in your eyes.” 

“ A most welcome one, and, fortunately, most substan- 
tial.” 

“ Oh, now, how unkind of you ! Why not tell me out- 
right that I’m shamefully fat, and have done with it ? 
Most substantial! . . . This lady,” he announced, 

addressing Miss W r ynn, “ this lady and I were children 
together in Paris, a hundred years ago. Then she went 
off and got married, and we haven’t seen each other since. 
Hence our tears.” 


250 


MEA CULPA. 


With that, the talk became general, and remained so, 
until, at the end of an hour, Armidis rose to go. I fol- 
lowed his example, and we took leave of Miss Wynn to- 
gether. 

My carriage was waiting at the door in the street. 

“Get in,” I said. “You must come home with me. 
You must dine with me. You don’t seem at all glad to 
see me. I . . .for me, it is the happiest moment I have 
known for four years.” 

“My dear, dear child,” he returned, “I am so glad to 
see you — this meeting, all unforeseen, has moved me so 
deeply — I have quite lost my head. I have had to be 
matter-of-fact and nonchalant about it — you must let me 
be so a little longer — lest I should become incoherent.” 

“ Very good. I will forgive you everything and any- 
thing, if you will only be nice now, and come home with 
me, and stay till I bid you depart.” 

“ Ah, yes, I should like to above all things. But ...” 

“ But . . . ? ” I prompted, as he paused. 

“ But — your prince? ” 

“ Oh, he is away. He is out of town.” 

“ Then I will come. Though I confess, my feet will 
burn when I cross his threshold, and, if I eat of his salt, 
it will give me an indigestion.” 

We drove through the Park, already thronged with car- 
riages, though the Season was but just beginning. 

I think we were both of us still rather embarrassed. 
We had not recovered yet from the suddenness of our 
encounter, and the excess of our emotion. We found it 
hard to talk ; and it was with an evident determination to 
say something, no matter what, that Armidis began to 
speak of Miss Wynn. 

“What a nice creature that Clotilde is!” he exclaimed. 
“ And she’s written some extremely pretty verses. 
There’s one thing I want you to explain to me. Why, 


ARMIDIS. 


251 


with her wit, her beauty, ancl her wealth, why is she still 
a spinster, at the age of forty ? How has she contrived 
to avoid the pitfall of matrimony ? You were no prettier 
than she, you were poor, you weren’t half so clever. And 
yet . . .!” 

“ Yes. If I had only been half so clever, perhaps it 
wouldn’t have happened.” 

“ But you had my cleverness quite at your service.” 

“ The longer I live, the more I come to realize that we 
can’t profit by the wisdom or the experience of others. 
We have to learn our own lessons, fight our own battles, 
alone and unaided.” 

“ That sounds very deep, my dear, but it only means 
that we have to live our own lives. If it were otherwise, 
God might have stopped with Eve and Adam. It is the 
fact that after all we are infinitely individual, infinitely 
isolated from each other, that makes life interesting, and 
helps to make it worth while. Our souls are like stars 
gravitating millions of miles apart in space : we mingle 
our light a little, we describe orbits around one another, 
but we never touch.” 

“ I don’t see how life is worth while in any case. It 
may be interesting, like any other tragedy ; but worth 
while . . . ! Is it worth while to suffer, without an 

object for our suffering? Yet that is what we have to do. 
We are told that we are born to trouble, which is bad 
enough. But to be born to aimless trouble . . . ! ” 

“ Oh, dear, me ! What a pessimist we are ! Shock- 
ing ! ” 

“ Aren’t you a pessimist ? I thought all wise men 
were pessimists.” 

“ A pessimist ? I ? When there are peaches and sun- 
shine in the world ! Eie ! ” 

“ Well, I am glad to see one thing,” said I ; “ you are 
always Armidis.” 


252 


MEA CULPA. 


“ Am I? Beally? Oh, I’m so relieved to be assured 
of that. I’m often dubious of my own identity. To hear 
a disinterested third person vouch for it is such a com- 
fort. And apropos of that, tell me, tell me truly, are you 
always Monica ? ” 

“ I have every reason to believe so. Why ? ” 

“ Because, if you are, I think I can impart a little in- 
formation to you, that will mitigate your pessimism some- 
what, and perhaps convert you to the faith that it is 
rather worth while, after all.” 

“ What is it ? Tell me, quick.” 

Armidis turned his full face upon me, and held my 
eyes for a moment with a smiling, studious, mystifying 
gaze. 

At last he said, “ He is in London.” 

“He?” I repeated. “Who?” 

“ He ? Who ? Behold the' dreadful soul of woman ! 
He ? Who ? Or is it only affectation ? Hypocrite ! Of 
old there was but one He for you. Don’t tell me that to- 
day there are many.” 

“ Oh ! ” I gasped, as his meaning struck me ; and I 
sank back in my place all in a tremor. 

“ Or rather, he isn’t in London,” he pursued. “ But 
it’s the same thing. He’s somewhere down on the south 
coast. But he has a studio here, in Chelsea; and lie’s 
coming up to town in a day or two. So there ! ” 

“ Don’t, don’t,” I begged. 

There were a thousand questions I wanted to ask ; but 
I had not the strength to pursue the subject ; it was like 
suddenly uncovering the quick. I closed my eyes, and 
for two or three minutes neither of us spoke. Then we 
drew up at Salchester House. 


II. 


I led him to my boudoir. 

“ There are so many things I can’t understand,” said 
he. “ Of course I know it’s none of my business, and you 
may snub me to your heart’s content. But we can’t play 
at mere acquaintanceship, you and I ; we’ve tried, and it’s 
been a failure. It must be all or nothing : close confeder- 
ates, as we were in the old days, or strangers. I know so 
much, and I understand so little. I know, for instance, 
that he beats you. I know that every day, in every way, 
he defiles and outrages every finer instinct of your being. 
I know that he seeks to crush your individuality, to de- 
prive you of all personal liberty, to reduce you to the con- 
dition of his mere thing and chattel. But what I don’t 
know, what I can’t understand, is why you submit to it, 
why you continue to live with him. I have waited and 
waited, from day to day, from year to year, to hear that 
you had left him. I have been nonplussed, amazed, horri- 
fied even, at your not doing so. I have conjectured about 
it in vain. Now if you love me, if you care for my love, 
explain it to me. What price does he pay you ? Don’t 
tell me it is the mere material advantage of your position, 
or the rank. I shouldn’t believe that.” 

“ How do you know these things ? ” I cried in con- 
sternation. “ How do you know he beats me ? Do you 
mean to say that it is common talk ? ” 

“ Common talk ? I can’t tell you whether it is com- 
mon talk or not. I am not of your world, and you are 
not of mine. But one night — yes. I was at a club. I 


254 


MBA CULPA. 


chanced to overhear three words dropped by a man who 
had been dining here with you and him. Only three 
words ; but they were enough. Just as the naturalist, 
finding the claw of an antediluvian beast, will build up 
from it a truthful image of the whole animal, so I, from 
those few words, built for myself a model of your domes- 
tic situation. But I had known it all before, I had sus- 
pected, I had divined, it all; these words merely con- 
firmed me in my belief. How do I know that three and 
two make five ? I am acquainted with you to some small 
extent, and I am not entirely ignorant of the character of 
your Prince. You are an obstinate, opinionated little 
person, Monica, and he is a slightly impulsive man. In 
the course of nature you would necessarily irritate him a 
good deal, and he would instinctively resort to his fists. 
Oh, I know ; I know everything ; I know by intuition 
and inference.” 

He drew his chair up close to me, and took my hands, 
and looked into my eyes. 

“ It’s this way, my dear,” he said. “You see, I love 
you. If you were my own daughter I could not love 
you better than I do. And love of this sort is very far 
from blind. It is like a spur to the imagination. I 
know you and I know Leonticheff ; therefore I know, I 
can guess, the whole sorry story. Ah, if there were but 
some way in which I could help you, shield you, make it 
easier for you ! That is the thought, the wish, that has 
never left me since your marriage. Daily I have said to 
myself, ‘ She is far away, alone with him, alone with 
Leonticheff, utterly at his mercy, alone and suffering. 
And ’ — you remember Capponsacchi ? — ‘ here am I, 
“ with a whole store of strengths, eating into my heart, 
craving employ; and she perhaps in need of a finger’s 
help ; and yet there is no way in the whole world to 
stretch out mine, and so relieve myself ! ” ’ Yes, it is a 


A B MIDIS. 


255 


good deal as you said : we have to fight our own battles 
alone and unaided. But why don’t you leave him ? 
Where is your self-respect, your pride, your spirit? 
How can you go on eating at the table, living in the 
house, sharing the luxuries, of a man who degrades you 
so ? I cannot understand it.” 

“ Oh, it’s simple enough,” said I, laughing a little, 
nervously. “ He holds my father as a hostage, as a bond 
and guarantee for my good behavior. Whether my 
father has done anything or not, I don’t know. But the 
Prince warns me that if I leave him, he will cause my 
father to be arrested and transported to Siberia. He has 
my father watched constantly, so that he may not, at a 
possible hint from me, quit the country. He gave us a 
proof of his power and influence in Russia, when he pro- 
cured my father’s pardon. I don’t dare to move. He 
would be sure to make good his threat.” 

“But — but he? What is his motive in all this? I 
should think, by this time, he too would desire a separa- 
tion. Does he enjoy it ? Is domestic infelicity like nec- 
tar in his cup ? ” 

“ Oh, don’t ask me. I can’t undertake to explain 
Prince Leonticheff. Or, rather, I dare say, the explana- 
tion is simply this : he regards me as a piece of property 
which he has bought and paid for, and he doesn’t intend 
to let any of his property slip between his fingers. Then, 
I suspect, he finds it convenient to have a scapegoat con- 
stantly at hand, some one upon whom he can vent his 
spleen when the world is out of tune for him. Further- 
more, is it not said that revenge is sweet ? He feels that 
he has a grievance against me, in that I don’t adore him, 
and he likes to keep me within reach, so that, by daily 
little applications of the torture, he may avenge himself.” 

“It is terrible, terrible,” said Armidis; “but the most 
terrible thing of all is the tone in which you speak of it.” 


256 


MEA CULPA. 


“ Oh,” I cried, “ it is a horrid, dark, sickening coil. 
Don’t pry into it.” 

“Ah, that is better. Speak seriously and feelingly 
about it. Your cynicism made my flesh creep. Then it 
is a condition of things that can only end with the death 
of one of you. I believe I should do you a kindness if I 
killed you.” 

“ Thank you. I should very much prefer it if you 
would kill him.” 

“ Oh, don’t, don’t, Monica,” he groaned. “ There are 
things which, in a case like this, you shouldn’t say even 
to me, you shouldn’t say even in jest. Besides, I don’t 
like to feel that you can jest about it, no matter how bit- 
terly. It seems somehow sacrilegious. It is too grimly, 
awfully serious.” 

“ Yes, it’s pretty serious,” I admitted. “ I don’t mean 
to jest about it. But if I speak about it too seriously I 
shall go into hysterics, or something. Oh, you can never 
know how miserable I am, or how I hate him.” 

After a long pause, Armidis said, “ I told you that Ju- 
lian North is in London — that he has a studio in Chelsea.” 

“ Yes ...” I responded. 

My temples began to throb, and something caught in 
my throat, and made it tingle. He had come back to the 
subject that had not left my mind since he had first intro- 
duced it, which I longed to hear him speak of, and yet 
which I could not help dreading and shrinking from, as I 
would dread and shrink from the touch of a knife. 

“ And you do not ask me a single question about him ! ” 
cried Armidis. “ I should think you would be interested 
to hear my news of him. If only for old sake’s sake ! 
Or is your indifference merely feigned ? Hypocrite ! ” 

“ What do you wish me to ask ? I questioned. 

My voice sounded faint and thin to me, and my heart 
trembled so ! 


ARMIDIS. 257 

“Well, for instance, you might ask how he is getting 
on.” 

“ Well, tell me then, how is he getting on ? ” . . . 

Oh, such a strange, painful, sinking feeling within me ! 

“ He is getting on famously. He is becoming the 
fashion. He has been here less than a year, and already 
he is distinctly a success. Portraits, you know ; por- 
traits of the aristocracy. He’s immensely clever ; he has 
improved wonderfully in his technique.” 

“ I am delighted to hear it. Of course I knew he was 
bound to succeed sooner or later. Do you . . .” My 

voice failed me ; I had to pause and recover it. . . . 

“ Do you see much of him ? ” 

“ Oh, a little, a little, some thirty-six hours in every 
twenty-four. That is to say, he has adopted me. We 
share a house together. A house, if you please, no mere 
beggarly bachelor chambers. Oh, we’re domesticity in- 
carnate. We have a cook and a maid-servant and a man- 
servant, and we’re extremely smart. I wear his old 
clothes, and he profits by my experience, if you’ll admit 
that to be possible for the nonce. We have a monstrous 
fine studio, wherein he paints by day, and I compose by 
night : a sort of aesthetic Box and Cox arrangement. We 
give the nicest little afternoon teas every Wednesday, and 
if you’re very good, perhaps I will procure you a card. 
Miss Wynn comes. We live in Church Street, and just 
around the comer from us is the home of that gentleman 
whom Julian designates as the greatest painter of all time, 
and with whose acquaintance we are honored. Environ- 
ment! It is everything. We paint, and compose, and 
sing our songs, and exhibit our pictures, and are alto- 
gether to be envied. Just at present, as I told you, my 
painter is out of town, and I’m disconsolate. He’s a 
most aquatic beast, amphibious, and lie’s fled to the south 
coast for a watery week or two. Have you been to the 


258 


MEA CULPA. 


Academy yet? The Grosvenor? You must go. We 
have a lot of portraits. One of myself that’s just too 
pretty for anything. And what a crowd we had Show- 
Sunday ! Celebrities ! Nobilities ! Everything short 
of Koyalties, and they’ll have to come to us in time, or 
the throne will lose its prestige. Oh, he’s a good lad, 
is Julian ; but not so young as when you knew him. Let 
me see ... I fancy he’s about one-and-thirty, and 
old for his age. You see, he has suffered a good deal — 
histoire de femme. And you will be twenty-nine ? Not 
so?” 

“Yes, twenty-nine.” 

“Your indifference puzzled me and troubled me at first, 
Monica, but now I’ve come to like it. I like it because 
it’s so transparent. At first it struck me as opaque, and 
I hate indifference when it is opaque ; but now I can see 
through it like a glass. I perceive a hundred questions 
trembling unspoken on your lips ; that’s right ; let them 
remain tacit. I will answer them. First, then, yes, I 
mean it, he has suffered a good deal, on account of a cer- 
tain woman. But we’ll leave that for the moment, to 
return to it later. Secondly, no, we don’t talk of that 
woman very often. When we first met, now some eleven 
months ago, we talked of nothing else for a while : until, 
that is, he thought he had pumped from me all the infor- 
mation concerning her that I would yield. Then, little 
by little, we dropped the subject. We found it, if you 
must know, too painful. It interfered with our work, it 
destroyed our repose of mind. No, I have never told 
him that her husband was a brute, whom they had com- 
pelled her to marry against her will ; I regarded my knowl- 
edge of that fact as in a sense privileged and confidential. 
Whatever he knows of the quality and savor of her 
Prince, he has gathered from other lips than mine. Yes, 
it is very rarely nowadays that we mention her. Poor 


ARM IBIS. 


259 


youth, lie has never been able to forget, and it’s always 
therefore a sore subject with him. Has he explained his 
silence to me, that criminal silence, which was, when all 
is said, the cause of the evil that followed? To be sure 
he has ; and it was just as I had supposed. He was per- 
mitted to write to the lady in question once a month, and 
then only such cool conventional letters as her father 
might with propriety look over. Well, one day, when 
the time for writing his monthly letter had come round, 
he found himself in the deepest depths of melancholy and 
discouragement. Everything had gone wrong with him ; 
he had no money; he had pawned his last pawnable pos- 
session ; what was worse, he could not work, and he be- 
lieved that he had lost his talent ; he believed that his 
hand had forgot her cunning. He was lonesome, he was 
in despair, and he was hungry. Then he thought, ‘What 
is the use of my writing to her ? It’s a hopeless case. It 
never can come to anything. I, who haven’t the price of 
a dinner in my pocket, what right have I to keep her re- 
minded of me ? If I have any sentiment of honor in my 
heart, I must help her to forget me. I must efface myself. 
I must not write to her any more.’ ... Of course 
he was insane : one of those periodic attacks of dementia 
to which all artists are subject. Insane, or worse ; I plead 
insanity, because, if he was in his sound mind, then there’s 
no excuse for him. Well, he remained insane for some 
time, some weeks or months. Meanwhile, two or three 
letters had come to him from her ; and he — the young 
maniac ! — what do you suppose he had done with them ? 
He had burned them, without opening them ! He said 
he felt that under the circumstances, and in view of the 
resolution he had taken, he had no right to read them ! 
Quixote ! Then, with the lapse of time, he recovered his 
wits, his insanity slipped from him like a foul garment, he 
was himself again, and— he realized what he had done ; 


262 


MEA CULPA. 


you know, if you’re really curious. But if we must talk 
of something else, let’s talk of dinner. The more I con- 
sider it, the less disposed I find myself to dine with you 
here. Really, in all seriousness, I shall have no appetite 
for my food, and what I eat would stick in my throat, if 
Prince Leonticheff pays for it. Come ! I have a scheme. 
A lark ! If you want to be very kind to me, and show 
that you’re not proud or anything, you will come and 
dine with me. It will be like old times. Don’t you re- 
member? We will make believe we are a boy and girl 
again. What say you ? ” 

“Where? Where do you want to go? ” 

“ Where ? Why, to our house, of course. There’s a 
dinner all prepared awaiting me there ; and I assure you 
our cook is not to be despised. We shall be quite alone. 
Julian is a hundred miles away. Just our two dear little 
selves. There ! Be nice, and say that you will come.” 

“ Oh, no. I thought you meant a restaurant. I can’t 
go to your house. I mustn’t.” 

“ Yes, yes, you can, you must. What harm ? I am so 
old, you know, and a friend of your infancy, besides. It 
will be like a resurrection of dead days. Ah, don’t be 
silly and conventional and cruel ! You can’t deny me 
this one little request. There’s no earthly chance of 
anything happening that you wouldn’t like. I tell you 
he’s a hundred miles away. And think of the pleasure it 
would give me. And you, yourself, wouldn’t you enjoy it 
a little ? I want to show you our studio, our garden.” 

“ Oh, I should enjoy it very much. But I feel that I 
oughtn’t. The idea frightens me.” 

“ There ! If you would enjoy it, I’ll hear no more. 
On with your hat and off with us.” 

The temptation was strong, and I was weak. We 
walked out together, and took a hansom, and were driven 
to Church Street, Chelsea. 


III. 


During the first half of our drive we chatted together 
merrily and vivaciously about such impersonal topics as the 
moment and the event suggested ; but after we had turned 
from Knightsbridge into Sloane Street our tongues began 
to lag, and by the time we had left Sloane Square be- 
hind us, and entered the King’s Road, our talk had quite 
died out. We went on from thence to the end in that 
sort of nervous silence which falls upon people who feel 
themselves to be aj)proaching an unusual and critical sit- 
uation. 

Probably we were each absorbed by our respective 
thoughts, conjectures, and misgivings. For me as I re- 
alized that we were drawing near to our destination, my 
courage began to ooze away, giving place to a sensation 
very like terror, and my hands and arms grew cold up to 
my elbows. When at last the cab came to a stand-still, 
and Armidis, having alighted, turned to help me to do 
likewise, I felt so faint and frightened that I shrank back, 
saying, “ No, I can’t, I can’t.” 

He looked at me, and understood. 

“Allons, pas de faiblesse! ” he urged, and offered me 
his hand. 

“No. I ought not to have come. And now I can’t go 
in. Take me back home.” 

“ Oh, really now, I can’t have that, you know,” he 
grieved. 

And getting hold of my hand, he pulled at it, very 
gently, but with such persuasiveness and such determina- 


262 


MEA CULPA. 


you know, if you’re really curious. But if we must talk 
of something else, let’s talk of dinner. The more I con- 
sider it, the less disposed I find myself to dine with you 
here. Beally, in all seriousness, I shall have no appetite 
for my food, and what I eat would stick in my throat, if 
Prince Leonticheff pays for it. Come ! I have a scheme. 
A lark ! If you want to be very kind to me, and show 
that you’re not proud or anything, you will come and 
dine with me. It will be like old times. Don’t you re- 
member? We will make believe we are a boy and girl 
again. What say you ? ” 

“ Where? Where do you want to go? ” 

“ Where ? Why, to our house, of course. There’s a 
dinner all prepared awaiting me there ; and I assure you 
our cook is not to be despised. We shall be quite alone. 
Julian is a hundred miles away. Just our two dear little 
selves. There ! Be nice, and say that you will come.” 

“ Oh, no. I thought you meant a restaurant. I can’t 
go to your house. I mustn’t.” 

“Yes, yes, you can, you must. What harm? I am so 
old, you know, and a friend of your infancy, besides. It 
will be like a resurrection of dead days. Ah, don’t be 
silly and conventional and cruel ! You can’t deny me 
this one little request. There’s no earthly chance of 
anything happening that you wouldn’t like. I tell you 
he’s a hundred miles away. And think of the pleasure it 
would give me. And you, yourself, wouldn’t you enjoy it 
a little ? I want to show you our studio, our garden.” 

“ Oh, I should enjoy it very much. But I feel that I 
oughtn’t. The idea frightens me.” 

“ There ! If you would enjoy it, I’ll hear no more. 
On with your hat and off with us.” 

The temptation was strong, and I was weak. We 
walked out together, and took a hansom, and were driven 
to Church Street, Chelsea. 


III. 


During the first half of our drive we chatted together 
merrily and vivaciously about such impersonal topics as the 
moment and the event suggested ; but after we had turned 
from Knightsbridge into Sloane Street our tongues began 
to lag, and by the time we had left Sloane Square be- 
hind us, and entered the King’s Road, our talk had quite 
died out. We went on from thence to the end in that 
sort of nervous silence which falls upon people who feel 
themselves to be approaching an unusual and critical sit- 
uation. 

Probably we were each absorbed by our respective 
thoughts, conjectures, and misgivings. For me as I re- 
alized that we were drawing near to our destination, my 
courage began to ooze away, giving place to a sensation 
very like terror, and my hands and arms grew cold up to 
my elbows. When at last the cab came to a stand-still, 
and Armidis, having alighted, turned to help me to do 
likewise, I felt so faint and frightened that I shrank back, 
saying, “No, I can’t, I can’t.” 

He looked at me, and understood. 

“Allons, pas de faiblesse! ” he urged, and offered me 
his hand. 

“No. I ought not to have come. And now I can’t go 
in. Take me back home.” 

“ Oh, really now, I can’t have that, you know,” he 
grieved. 

And getting hold of my hand, he pulled at it, very 
gently, but with such persuasiveness and such determina- 


264 


ME A CULPA. 


tion, that presently I found myself standing on the pave- 
ment beside him. 

“We are pale,” he laughed; “but our pallor is in- 
teresting and becoming, and it sets off admirably our big 
dark eyes. Our lair is not very terrible, and I promise 
you safe-conduct. But first, please examine and appreciate 
our exterior.” 

It was a one-storied house, built in the style of 
Southern Europe, covered with yellow stucco, and roofed 
with red tiles ; and its facade was pierced by only one 
window, a small grated window, high up above the door, 
so that the effect was rather oriental. 

“ It was built by a South American,” Armidis explained. 
“ It’s horribly out of place in London, but I like it all the 
same. It encloses three sides of a court, and all our win- 
dows look into that. In the middle of the court there is 
a fountain, and beyond, the garden. Come in.” 

He opened the door with a latch-key, and led me 
through a short passage into a great room lighted by a 
big north window, furnished and decorated as a studio, 
and smelling strongly of paints. I felt like one in a 
trance, or half unconscious. I sank upon the first chair I 
came to, and closed my eyes. My heart was beating so 
hard I could scarcely breathe. 

“For heaven’s sake, don’t tell me you are going to 
faint,” he cried piteously. 

“ Oh, no, no, I’m all right,” I answered, making an 
effort to possess myself. “ A little tired, that’s all.” 

“ I’m sorry,” he went on, “ our shop is almost empty. 
Most of our stock has gone to the exhibitions : the Salon, 
you know, the Academy — yes, we condescend to the Acad- 
emy; it’s only fair that they should have a few good 
things, if but to teach the public how bacl the others are 
— the Grosvenor, the New. Still I can show you one or 
two little trifles that may interest you, and the portrait w^e 


ARMIDIS. 


265 


are at work on now — a portrait of Lady Emily Clialdicott. 
A duke’s daughter ! Oh, I told you we were smart ; and 
if you favor us with an order, you will be in your proper 
element — among your own kind. Princess ! . . . 

Besides, there’s always the room itself, for you to look 
at. It’s been a good deal admired. Take my arm, and let 
me personally conduct you.” 

I took his arm, and walked about the room with him, 
looking at the canvases he pointed out, and listening to 
his running commentaries on them. But I could not in- 
terest myself in these things at that time. One thought, 
that seemed to include all others, filled my brain : “ This 
is his room. I am in his room. The room he works in. 
This is his room, his room, his room.” It was almost as 
if I Were in contact with a part of himself ; in communion 
with him ; with him who had so long ago died out of my 
life, after filling it, and now again suddenly was revisiting 
it, like a ghost. My emotions were too many and too tur- 
bulent to leave me any mind wherewith to appreciate his 
pictures. 

“ Well, I must say,” cried Armidis, at last, in impa- 
tience, “ you are hard to move. Unsatisfactory ! Not a 
word of praise. Come, you are unworthy of your privi- 
lege. We will go into the garden.” 

A door from the studio led into the court. 

“Here is our fountain,” said Armidis. “Perhaps you 
will admire that.” 

“ I admire everything,” I assured him. “ Only I don’t 
gush. Yes, the fountain is very pretty.” 

“ Our Soutli-American was a sculptor, who had a lot 
of money and some real talent, and one day blew his 
brains out. This fountain is his own work. Venus ris- 
ing from the Sea. The tritest of themes, but not badly 
done. Stay. I will turn the water on.” 

He turned the water on, and we stopped a moment to 


266 


MEA CULPA. 


watch the fountain play. Then we went from the court 
into the garden. 

“ I hate to keep vaunting my merchandise,” he said, 
“ but I must impress upon you that this is a charming 
garden. The greensward, eh ? And the old red walls, 
covered with ivy, eh ? And the beds of geranium ! And 
the rose-bushes ! And the struggling fig-trees ! And 
our jolly old oak, which was growing here when our 
grandfathers were children ! Isn’t it nice, now ? Let us 
sit down yonder, on that bench.” 

We sat down on the bench. 

“ This is the best hour for it, too,” he said ; “ with the 
sunset colors in the sky. Do you see ? We are screened 
from all inquisitive eyes. Nothing is visible of our neigh- 
bors but their house-tops. I feel that I must smoke a 
cigarette.” 

Having lighted his cigarette, he began again. . . . 

“ Do you know, Monica, you upset all my theories, all 
my little pet notions and hypotheses. Most unkind of 
you.” 

“ What are they, the theories that I upset ? ” 

“ First tell me this, what is your ruling passion ” 

“My ruling passion? Oh, that’s a hard question. I 
don’t think I have one. If I have, I don’t know what it 
is.” 

“ Well, I mean, what is the most frequent, the most con- 
stant, of your emotions ? What is the feeling most often 
in your heart ? ” 

“ Oh ! ” I exclaimed. 

“ Well ? ” he questioned. 

“ Oh, I don’t know. I’m afraid no very good one.” 

“ Is it not — let us be frank — is it not a feeling of bitter- 
ness ? A feeling of rancor in thinking of your spoiled 
life, and of hatred for the man who has spoiled it? ” 

“ Oh, I don’t know. Perhaps so. Why ? ” 


A Rtf ID IS. 


267 


“ Because I have always entertained an innocent little 
theory to the effect that one’s ruling passion, one’s most 
frequent emotion, must have a direct influence upon one’s 
physical character and personal appearance. I have 
thought that if one’s ruling passion were good and sweet, 
it would necessarily end by beautifying one ; and contra- 
riwise, if it were bad and bitter, one would grow ugly to 
the eye.” 

“ Ah, I see. And you find that I have grown ugly to 
the eye ! ” 

“ No, no, no, iutf altro / That is just the point'. I 
said that you upset my theories, not that you confirmed 
them. I find that you have grown wonderfully, terribly 
beautiful ; and that is what puzzles me. You were a 
sufficiently pretty girl, my dear ; you had eyes, you had 
hair, you had a skin. But you were too thin, you looked 
as though, if a man blew on you, you’d evaporate. Now 
you’ve rounded out ; and the character of your beauty 
has deepened and mellowed. Your eyes were always 
strange and attractive ; now they’re . . . ! You’re still 

pale, but your pallor is warm, where of old time it was 
cold. And your hair is darker than it was, and more 
becoming. Altogether you’ve improved. I hope for his 
own sake poor Julian will not see you. And all this im- 
provement has taken place in spite of a passion, an emo- 
tion, that is evil, dominating your heart. I don’t know 
what to make of it.” 

“ I am afraid your eyes are becoming dim. I can see 
in my glass that I am growing hard-looking, tired-looking, 
just as in truth I am growing hard and tired in spirit. I 
am happy to-day ; perhaps that has refreshed and soft- 
ened me a little. But I know that ordinarily I look hard 
and cold and tired. I can see it myself, and I have heard 
other people say so.” 

“ I suppose a great many men have fallen in love 


268 


ME A CULPA. 


with you ? I confess at once that .1 should do so if I 
were thirty years younger than I am.” 

“ On the contrary, so far from many, not any men have 
fallen in love with me.” 

“You can never make me believe that.” 

“ Nevertheless, it is the fact.” 

“ Impossible. That they have never declared their 
passions I can well believe. You have a forbidding man- 
ner. But that does not prove that they haven’t felt .” 

“ Oh, for the declaring, yes ! At one time it was a 
favorite amusement of my husband’s to set his creatures 
on to declare love to me, and to persecute me with their 
addresses. It wearied me, it disgusted me, but I couldn’t 
take it very tragically, it was so absurdly despicable ; so 
in the end he tired of it. Those are the only adventures 
of the sort that I have had.” 

“ I told you he was a beast before you married him,” 
said Armidis. 

“ Yes, but I was a fool, and I didn’t believe you.” 

“If I were you, I wouldn’t live with him another day. 
I don’t believe for a moment that he’d molest your father.” 

“ The mere possibility that he might, is enough.” 

“ How old is your father ? ’* 

“ Oh, don’t, don’t ! ” I cried. “ Enough evil thoughts 
visit my mind, as it is. That is the one that I have tried 
and tried never to allow to enter it.” 

“ Yet it is a question of some one’s death.” 

“Yes, Prince Leonticheff’s, or mine. No one else’s.” 

“ Prince Leonticheff is a very robust person.” 

“ Yes, I know that. But robust people die. I wish he 
was dead from the bottom of my soul. Now do you be- 
lieve I am hard ? I would not go so far as to hire a man 
to kill him ; but if a man would kill him without consult- 
ing me, I would give him my whole inheritance by way of 
reward. Now do you believe I am hard? ” 


ARMTBIS. 


269 


“ You say things that you don’t really mean. Oh, yes, 
you think you mean them. Superficially you mean them ; 
your meaning is skin-deep. Down at the bottom, though, 
you mean nothing of the kind. If Prince Leonticheff 
should die, you would be inexpressibly shocked and 
grieved. For death is always a shocking thing, and the 
death of a brute beast like him is trebly so. Eventually, 
however, you would be happy. If he died a natural death, 
you would eventually be the gainer by it. But if he died 
by your connivance — never ! You would only change the 
form of your misery. You would exchange what you suf- 
fer now for something worse — remorse. What you ought 
to do is plain. Leave him. Leave him, and let him ex- 
act the penalty from your father if he will. I don’t know 
why your father shouldn’t pay, as well as you. You would 
have all public sympathy and opinion on your side. In the 
face of that, he wouldn’t dare to molest your father.” 

“He could cause my father to be hanged to-morrow 
without letting his own name once appear. No, I cannot 
leave him. Some day I shall probably take poison. I If 
weren’t such a coward ! But some day I shall have the 
courage of despair, and then it will end.” 

“I think we had better change the subject,” said 
Armidis. “ It is getting dark and chilly. Suppose we 
go into the house and have our dinner.” 

After dinner, he said, “You asked me what I had been 
doing lately. Just these last few days I have been writ- 
ing a little melody for that old French brunette — Encore 
queje sois jeunette. I will sing it for you.” 

I played the accompaniment, reading from his manu- 
script, and he sang his song. 

“Isn’t it like old times? ” he demanded. “Dear me ! 
It makes me feel young again.” 

“ It is delightfully and painfully like old times,” I con- 
fessed. 


270 


MEA CULPA. 


“ Now,” said he, “ I want to do that brunette into 
English verse of the same measure, so that it can be sung 
to my tune. You are an old translatress. Will you help 
me?” 

And then I spent a perfectly happy evening, helping 
him do the brunette into English verse. When at last 
we had finished one stanza to our satisfaction, it was so 
late that I had to go home. He accompanied me, as we 
had come, in a hansom. 

“ Though I’m scarce a woman grown, 

I have still my true-love sweet ; 

He is mine, he is my own ; 

And to-night we two shall meet. . . 

Yet when I hear his footfall near 
All my heart is thrilled with fear. . . 

Yes, it will do very fairly, very fairly,” he said. “ But 
when will you come again ? When can we resume our 
labors ? Julian will not return for a good week yet.” 

“Oh, I will come whenever you like,” I answered. “ I 
have enjoyed it so much.” 

“ Will you come to-morrow ? ” 

“ I have a lot of engagements for to-morrow ; but I will 
break them all, and come.” 

“ You are an angel. I will call for you, and fetch you. 
About five o’clock. I am so glad to see that you have not 
grown proud. Princess ! ” 

“ If you call me that, if you remind me of that, I will 
not come, after all.” 

“Oh, forgive me. It was an ill-timed jest. Good- 
night.” 


“ Ah ! ” exclaimed Armidis, as we entered the studio in 
Chelsea the next afternoon, “ a letter ! A letter on the 
mantel ! ” 

He picked the letter up, and held it out at arm’s length, 
so that we could both see its superscription. It was in 
Julian’s handwriting. 

“ We will open it and read it together,” he said ; and 
tore off the envelope. 

Then we sat down side by side upon a sofa, and read 
the letter. It was dated that same morning, from Greal, 
Sussex, and it ran as follows . . . 

* Dear A. : 9 

“ I have had an extremely odd adventure, one of those 
that look like ironical pre-arrangements on the part of 
Fate, but are in reality, I suppose, only accidental coinci- 
dences. You will see some report of it, no doubt, in this 
evening’s papers ; but the news-gatherers are ignorant of 
that which gives it point. 

‘‘Yesterday afternoon a brisk southwest wind sprang 
up in this quarter of the world, which rapidly strength- 
ened into half a gale, so that the waters became white 
with trouble as far as eye could see, and what sails there 
were about began to put in for shelter. Presently ar- 
rived one of the village fishing-boats ; and the skipper 
announced that he had passed a man clinging to the bell- 
buoy that floats some three miles out in the Channel. 
He had tried, he said, to approach near enough to take 


272 


MEA CULPA 


the poor devil off, but the sea was running so high, and 
the buoy was pitching about in such unruly fashion, that 
that had proved impossible. He had not even been able 
to get within speaking distance, and find out who the fel- 
low was, or how he came in such a sorry plight. So, the 
conclusion was, there hung the man at the present mo- 
ment, unless he had already lost his hold, very like to 
drown. 

“ The affair interested me a good deal ; and after some 
enquiring about, and a lot of parleying and haggling, I 
finally hired a steam tug to take me out. It was roughish, 
there’s no denying that. But we managed easily enough 
to come up within a few hundred feet of the buoy, and 
there surely enough was the man. The tug’s captain re- 
fused to go any nearer — for which, however, he could 
not be blamed, because it really would have been danger- 
ous. But we contrived with some labor to launch a small 
boat, and a couple of stout men rowed me up to within 
shouting distance of the buoy. 

“It was pitching about unmercifully, fad we were 
doing likewise. We would go up, and the buoy would go 
down ; then we would go down and the buoy would go 
up ; and it was like a wet game of see-saw, to which the 
deafening clang-clang of the bell kept time. Well, I had 
a rope, with a noose at its end, like a halter or a lariat ; 
and I yelled out to the castaway to catch it, and gave it a 
fling. But he didn’t budge. He simply lifted up his 
voice, and remarked that if I wanted to get him off that 
buoy I must come and take him, because he explained, 
he was so giddy and so exhausted that he didn’t dare to 
let go even with one hand long enough to grab the rope. 
Thereat we engaged in a little argument, which was tire- 
some, seeing that the bell drowned more than half we 
said, and anyhow, I saw that he was bound to get the 
best of it, and that there was nothing for it, but I must 


A R MIDIS. 


273 


take a bath. Which I did. I hung on to the rope with 
my teeth, and I swam out to the buoy, and finally man- 
aged to fasten my noose about the man’s waist ; and then 
I called out to the boatmen to haul the rope in, and they 
hauled, and by and by, to cut a long story short, we were 
all safe and sound again on board the tug, and steaming 
back to Greal. 

“ Well, my gentleman was really pretty badly used up ; 
and at first his observations were few and not especially 
luminous. But some warm clothes, and a nip of spirits, 
went a long way toward reviving him ; and presently his 
tongue got loosened, and then he proved to my satisfac- 
tion that he had a supreme talent for wagging it. He 
talked ten thousand words an hour for the next three 
hours. 

“He said he had been out in a small pleasure boat, 
and a squall had struck him from behind, and capsized 
him ; and he had managed to reach that buoy, and there 
he had been hanging between sea and sky for a matter of 
six hours. He seemed to be an effusive as well as a 
loquacious sort of creature, and quite overwhelmed me 
with expressions of his gratitude. * There’s one thing I 
can assure you of, my friend,’ he said, ‘ and that is that 
you won’t repent it. I don’t know w T ho you are, or what 
your station in life may be ; but I can just tell you this, 
that, whoever and whatever you are, I’m not the man to 
forget a favor, and my position is such as to enable me 
to rew r ard you royally. You may reasonably count this 
as the most profitable day’s business you have ever trans- 
acted in the course of your life.’ . . • 

“ From which, dear chum, I concluded that I had res- 
cued either a lord or a lunatic. 

“ C I see, you don’t recognize me,’ he went on, ‘ but then 
I gather from your accent that you’re an American, so 
that’s not to be wondered at. Well, when I tell you who 
18 


274 


ME A CULPA. 


I am, yon will begin to realize what a monstrous stroke 
of good luck lias befallen you.’ 

“Well, now, Armidis, guess a little who he was. No, 
none of the Royal Highnesses ; no, not Mr. Gladstone, 
or Lord Salisbury, or Parnell ; no, nor yet a maniac es- 
caped from an asylum. . . . 

“ He was, he is — the Prince Leonticheff ! . . . Her 
husband ! 

“ Oh, how I should like to be on the spot, to see you 
jump around, and hear you howl, when this intelligence 
reaches you ! That I, I, I should have been instrumental 
in prolonging the life of her husband ! Surely, Destiny 
went out of her way to be ironical. As you see, I laugh 
about it ; but I suspect it is the laughter of nervousness ; 
down deep it makes me feel cold. It seems somehow 
full of an uncanny significance, which I cannot under- 
stand. 

“ But tell me this one thing, you who know : will she 
be glad or sorry ? He is apparently a most eccentric per- 
son, with a monumental opinion of himself, and divers 
other peculiarities equally grotesque. He tells me, for 
instance, that he has written the greatest novel in the 
English language! But I should judge him, notwith- 
standing, to be entirely well-meaning and good-natured ; 
and probably she is fond of him, and will be glad. Any- 
how, I hope so — for her sake. 

“ But suppose she is unhappy with him? 

“ You have told me so little about the circumstances 
of her marriage, and the character of her husband ; yet 
somehow I have gathered the impression that it was a 
marriage rather forced upon her, and that he was not a 
man to make her happy. I may have mistaken your in- 
tention, but I have certainly surmised — more from your 
very silence, your very reticence, perhaps, than from any- 
thing you have said — that it was forced upon her against 


ARMIDIS. 


275 


her will, and that Leontieheff was not an angel. Then I 
have heard stories about him, remarks, and little anec- 
dotes, elsewhere ; and altogether I have got a notion that 
. . . well, you understand. Now if this is so? If 

she is unhappy with him, and was at the point of being 
delivered from him ? And then I, I of all men, stepped 
in to interfere ! That would be too much. 

“ I say he seems a good-natured person, and so he does ; 
but he is not beautiful, he is not dainty or delicate ; and 
when I look at him, at his fat red face, his double-chin, 
his slouching burly figure, and then realize what his rela- 
tion is to her — well to tell you the truth, my gorge rises, 
and I cannot believe she cares for him. She, the most 
sensitive and high-souled woman that was ever bom ! I 
cannot believe that she cares for these fifteen stone of 
flesh. I cannot help thinking that life with him must be 
a perpetual squirm and shudder for her. But very likely 
I am allowing my imagination to ran riot; very likely 
my wish is the father of my thought. 

“You see, the whole affair has excited me rather. 

“One thing is odd — he does not know who I am, 
though I have told him my name, and that I am a painter. 
Do you mean to say he has never heard of me ? . . . 

Had I become already a thing forgotten and never men- 
tioned, when he arrived in Paris, only a year or so after 
my departure ? But never mind. I can’t talk it over on 
paper. There are so many things I want to ask, I should 
have to write a volume. When I see you — which, D.Y., 
will be to-morrow — you must prepare yourself for a cross- 
examination. After what has happened, I feel that I am 
entitled, that I have acquired a sort of right, to ask you 
to break your silence concerning her husband and her 
marriage. 

“I come to town to-morrow in his company. He 
swears he will make my fortune for me. I may count him 


276 


MEA CULPA. 


from this time forward as my certain friend and ally, he 
says. Isn’t it funny? But the fun is surely of a ghastly 
sardonic kind. He wants me to come and stay at his 
house in town. I have had the greatest difficulty in beg- 
ging off. I am engaged forthwith to paint his portrait and 
his wife’s ! I can’t very well tell him that once upon a 
time I was her favored suitor, can I? 

“Oh, Ar midis, it has somehow all gone straight to my * 
sore place. You see how incoherent it has rendered me. 

I have to laugh a little at it, lest I should do something 
mad. But I should like to go to sleep to-night and never 
wake. What is the use — to live with death in the soul ? 

'“I don’t know but I have forgotten to tell you that she 
is in town. I am, according to Leonticheff, to be pre- 
sented to her as soon as I return — to-morrow even. What 
had I better do ? I don’t see how I can get out of it. 
Perhaps I had best turn tail and fly to the Continent ? 
And yet this chance of seeing her, of speaking with her, 
of hearing her speak, of drinking in her beauty for a mo- 
ment, of feeling myself in her presence, and breathing the 
same air that she breathes — oh, I cannot let it pass ! It 
would be like bread to a starving man. Just to let my 
eyes rest with hers for one minute ! It would renew my 
life, and give me strength to go on with. What harm 
could possibly come of it ? And yet, I dread it, I dread 
it. For if she cares for him, and thanks me in good 
earnest, her thanks will scald me. And if she hates him, 
she will want to curse me, and I will curse myself. This 
much I will say to you in a whisper : if I had known be- 
forehand who the man was, I am afraid I never should 
have hired that tug. That’s beastly, I know ; but I can’t 
help it. 

“ Au re voir till to-morrow. — J. N.” 


PART VI. 


DESPERATE APPLIANCE. 








• • • 


% 








.Mi 


I. 

“And now,” concluded Prince Leonticlieff — it was the 
afternoon of the next day, and he had just given me his 
version of the affair : a version eloquent of praise and 
gratitude for his deliverer — “ and now he is downstairs, in 
the library, waiting to be presented to you. And I shall 
expect you — whatever your private feelings may be, and 
I dare say you wish he had been a thousand miles away at 
the time — I shall expect you to receive him graciously, 
and to thank him for saving your husband’s life. I will 
have no sulking on this occasion ; let that be understood. 

I am going down to him now, and you will be good 
enough to follow in the course of a few minutes.” 

“ Yes,” I responded, “ I will come at once.. But first 

55 

I felt so weak and nervous, my heart was fluttering so, 
my thoughts were in such confusion, I had to pause and 
close my eyes, and rest for a moment, before I could go - 
on. A sleepless night, a long day crowded with emotions, 
had quite unstrung me ; and now that the actual hour had 
come, and I knew that Julian in living person was waiting 
to meet me twenty steps away, and that in another minute 
or two I should be standing in his presence — now the 
last atom of my strength seemed to slip from me, leav- 
ing me so prostrated, so exhausted, that I could neither 
move nor speak. I closed my eyes, and was silent for 
a little. Then at last I gathered force enough to con- 
tinue. “ But first I think I ought to tell you that this 
Mr. North . . .” 


280 


MEA CULPA. 


I looked up to where Prince Leonticheff had been 
standing. He was gone. I suppose he had left the 
room at the end of his own speech, without waiting to 
to hear my reply. . . . 

By and by, with throbbing pulses, and tremulous 
breath, I started to follow him. ... I descended the 
staircase, and advanced toward the library — where Julian 
was waiting for me ! — Julian was waiting for me ! Oh, 
the joy, and the strange pain and fear ! How should I 
greet him ? How would he greet me ? What would pass 
between us ? I did not know. I could not think. My 
brain was whirling, all my faculties were as if frozen, my 
very body seemed numb and dead. 

A servant threw open the library door. I entered the 
room. 

But I could do no more than just cross the threshold. 
There I had to stand still, and put out my hand, and 
lean against a console for support : so faint and weak 
that otherwise, I believe, I should have sunken to the 
floor. 

He was seated on a sofa, beneath one of the great 
windows, opposite me. Prom the instant of the door’s 
opening I saw him there, I could see nothing else. But 
to my dizzy senses, the distance between us seemed im- 
measurable ; it was as if I looked at him across leagues 
and leagues of space. 

At my entrance I saw him rise, turning his face toward 
me. It was white like chalk ; and his lips were contracted 
in an awful simulacrum of a smile. He fixed his eyes 
upon me ; they glowed with an intense hungry fire that 
seemed to bum me, so that, by a movement altogether 
instinctive and spasmodic, I put up my hands, and 
covered my breast, as if to protect it. 

“ This is Mr. North,” the Prince began — the sound of 
his voice startled me : I had forgotten that he was there 


DESPERATE APPLIANCE. 


281 


— “ Mr. North, who yesterday, as I have told yon, saved 
my life at the very imminent peril of his own. Whoever 
is my friend must be his equally. Whoever wishes for 
my good-will must do him honor.” 

The room had grown dim and gray to my sight ; and a 
chill and sickness had come upon me, like those that pre- 
cede a fainting-fit. All I could see of Julian was a vague 
black figure, unsubstantial and wavering, far, far in the 
distance, and a patch of whiteness where his face had 
been. The thought that I was going to faint, and so 
make a scene, acted as a spur upon me, and gave me a 
sort of desperate energy. I dare say it was with every 
sign of self-possession that I answered the Prince, “We 
did not need to be introduced, Mr. North and I. We 
knew each other long ago in Paris. You have often 
heard of him. Do you not remember ? ” 

“ What ! ” cried the Prince, looking amazement from 
one to the other of us. . . . 

So he stood for a moment, nonplussed. 

“ You mean to say . . . ? ” he began at ’last ad- 

dressing me. 

He read his answer, I suppose, in my face. 

“ Well, I’ll be hanged ! ” he ejaculated, with a laugh. 
Whereat he went up to Julian, and slapped him on the 
shoulder, saying with all good nature, “ Well, my boy, 
here’s a go. Hey ? So you— you’re the young American 
painter ! It’s the strangest coincidence I ever heard of 
in my life. And how mum you kept about it ! But I 
say, look here, did you know who I was ? That is, that 
I was her husband? ” . 

“No. All I knew was that a man was clinging to the 
buoy,” Julian answered. 

It was the first time I had heard his voice since he had 
bidden me good-by in Paris, six years ago. 

“No, no, I mean after we were aboard the tug,” ex- 


282 


MEA CULPA. 


plained the Prince. “After I liacl told you my name. 
Did you know that I was the man she had married? ” 

“ Oh, yes ; I knew that,” Julian said. 

“ Well, it’s all right, anyhow,” returned the Prince, com- 
plaisantly. “ It’s all right, my boy. Don’t let it disturb 
you the least bit in the world. The past is past, and I’m 
not jealous of it. There’s nothing small about me, and I 
shan’t begrudge you — the man who saved my life — I 
shan’t begrudge you my wife’s friendship, even if you 
were, in days gone by, her lover. Sit down. We’ll be 
quite a little family party. . . . And I say,” he in- 

quired of me, “ can’t we have some tea ? ” 

I rang for a servant ; and he went on. . . . 

“No, my friend, don’t let it disturb you. If it was going 
to disturb anybody, you say, it ought to disturb me ; but 
it doesn’t, not in the least. You see, I’m so confident of 
the affections of my wife. I know all about the little 
fancy you and she had for each other years ago ; she’s told 
me all about it, and laughed over it with me. Oh, that 
sort of thing happens to everyone at a certain age ; but it 
doesn’t count, it doesn’t leave any mark. On the contrary, 
it exercises the faculties, it paves the way for a really se- 
rious passion. Monica loves me now with such whole- 
souled devotion, I’d be a fool to let the past bother me. 
I’ve always been an attractive man for women ; and she 
fairly dotes on me ; she can’t bear me out of her sight. 
But it’s a wonderful coincidence all the same, isn’t it ? 
Ho-ho-ho ! ” he laughed. 

Julian turned away, and looked out of the window. I 
wondered whether he believed what the Prince said. Or 
did he understand that it was simply a lie, manufactured 
on the spot, for the purpose of hoodwinking him, reliev- 
ing the Prince’s embarrassment, and thrusting a thorn 
into me ? Had he seen Armidis ? If so, he knew by this 
time just what the relations were between my husband 


DESPERATE APPLIANCE. 


283 


and myself. But if lie had not seen Armidis, what was 
there to prevent him believing anything and everything 
the Prince might say ? 

The Prince was looking hard at me, smiling in enjoy- 
ment of his advantage and my helplessness. 

A servant came in with the tea. 

“Now, my darling,” the Prince said, “let us have our 
tea. Come, North ; tea, tea ! Will you take yours with 
cream and sugar, or with rum and a bit of lemon ? Better 
try the rum and lemon. Are there any cigarettes here, 
dearest ? ” 

The situation was unbearable. There was nothing I 
could say, there was but one thing I could do, to relieve 
it. I got up hastily, and made for the door, to leave the 
room. 

But the Prince stepped in front of me. ... 

“Where are you going, my love? To fetch some 
cigarettes ? Oh, don’t trouble to do that. Send some 
one. Come, you haven’t spoken to your old friend yet, or 
shaken hands with him.” 

He put his arm around my waist, and drew me back 
into the room. 

That was the last straw. ... At his touch, all my 
hatred of him, all my scorn of him, all the rancorous ill- 
feeling for him that smoldered in my heart, all the angry 
pain that he had been kindling there during this interview, 
blazed up in an uncontrollable fire. At his touch . . . ! 

Oh, I could have killed him ! 

I felt myself suddenly grow cold and rigid ; then sud- 
denly the cold changed to heat, a fierce heat that went 
burning through all my veins. Then I heard the Prince 
say, unctuously, coaxingly, “ Come ; you surely must 
have something to say to Mr. North,” and he gave my 
waist a little pressure. Then . . . 

Somehow, by a quick, violent movement, I managed to 


284 


ME A CULPA. 


free myself from his embrace, and trembling with rage, I 
cried, “ How dare you touch me ! ” Then, mechanically — 
for my instinct to leave the room was still upon me — I 
tried again to reach the door. But again the Prince 
placed himself before me. His face had turned purple, 
and his little eyes shone upon me with their wickedest, 
most menacing light. 

I thought he was going to strike me. In another min- 
ute I believe he would have done so. For a second I 
stood still, facing him, hesitating, trying to think of some 
way to escape him. . . . 

He took a step toward me. . . . 

“ Julian ! ” I called. . . . 

And then, somehow, I found myself at his side, and had 
his hand in mine ! I looked at the Prince, and I cried 
out, “ Julian, don’t let him touch me ! ” . . . And all 

at once there came to me, in a great wave, a feeling that 
I had never known before. I stood at Julian’s side, and 
I clung to his hands, warm and strong in mine, and I re- 
alized, with a mighty swelling of the heart, I realized that 
1 was safe ! that now, at last, for the first time since my 
marriage, I was safe, absolutely secure and safe ! My 
enemy was at bay ! There was no harm he could do me 
now, no insult he could offer me. Julian was here, beside 
me, holding my hands, giving me strength and courage. 
For the first time in the course of our lives together, I 
met the Prince on something like equal terms. I felt as 
if clad in armor, and surrounded by an invincible body- 
guard. I looked across the room at him, scowling threats 
upon me, and now somehow more repulsive, more mean 
and evil, in my sight than he had ever been before ; I 
looked at him, and my passion mounted, and possessed 
me, and carried me away. . . . 

“Julian ! ” I cried, still trembling, in spite of my great 
joyous sense of safety. “ Oh, you will not let him touch 


DESPERATE APPLIANCE. 


285 


me ! Look at him. He wishes me to speak to you. He 
brought me down here to thank you for having saved his 
life ! To thank you for it ! For having risked your life, 
to save his ! And then, when he found out who you were, 
then he began to mock me, and torture me, in your 
presence, telling you that I loved him, and that I had 
laughed with him over my love for you. He thought I 
would not dare to answer him, to contradict him, and he 
gloated in the anguish he knew he was causing me, and 
in my helplessness. And then he would not let me go 
away, but kept me here, and wanted to know if I had 
nothing to say to you. And then when he touched me, 
and I could not control myself any longer, and could not 
help showing my fear of him and my loathing of him, then 
he became furious ; and now, now he would strike me, 
he would knock me down, and kick me, and spit upon 
me, only you are here, and he doesn’t dare, he doesn’t 
dare ! . . . You think I must have something to say to 

Mr. North ! Do you know who he is ? Do you know what 
he was ? Oh he was my lover — my lover, my lover ! ” I 
repeated. “Do you understand ? And now I see him for 
the first time, after so many years, and so much suffering ! 
Oh, I have much to say to him, a great many things to say 
to him ; things that I have never been able to say to any- 
one before, that I never could have said to anyone but him, 
and not even to him, except for what has happened these 
last two days. But he has saved your life, he has saved 
you from drowning, and that gives him a peculiar relation 
to you and me. I think he has a right to know the sort of 
life that he has saved, and how his saving it will affect me, 
how it will affect my life. I am going to tell him. . . . 

You, you cannot stop me. You will not dare to touch 
me, and I can speak without fear of you. If you so much 
as raised your finger against me, he would kill you — yes, 
he would kill you ! ” 


286 


MEA CULPA. 


Oh, the wild joy ! To let this lava-flood of passion, 
long pent under, long accnmnlating, and burning and 
festering in my heart, to let it at last and all at once 
break forth ! To stand there protected by the man who 
loved me, the man I loved, and pour it out fearlessly upon 
the head of the man I hated ! 

“Julian,” I hurried on, “yesterday I was at your 
house, with Armidis. I was there with him when he re- 
ceived your letter ; and I read it with him, he let me 
read it with him. . . . Look, Julian ! You have 

saved this man’s life. At the risk of your owm, you have 
saved his life. That gives you a peculiar position toward 
him and toward me. The life you saved — you have a 
right to know it, to know what it is like, to know what 
you have done. Oh, I don’t blame you, I don’t reproach 
you ; but you would never have done it, if you had knowm 
beforehand. I will tell you now; I will tell you the 
truth about it. I have never told anyone before ; I have 
kept it all a secret. But now I will tell you. He would 
like to stop rue, but he cannot, he doesn’t dare, because 
you are here. Oh, thank God that you are here ! For 
this hour at any rate I need not fear him. It makes me 
feel so safe, so strong and fearless to have you here. 
Look at him. Either he must go away, and leave us to- 
gether, and let me tell you what I have to tell, alone ; or 
he must stay here, and not move or speak, and listen. 
Julian, do you know how I came to marry him ? You 
said in your letter you thought it was forced upon me. 
Oh, forced upon me ! Listen. He had it in his power 
to procure a pardon for my father from the Emperor of 
Russia, so that he could return to his own country, and 
to his estates, and to all his rights. But he said he 
would not exercise this power, unless he was paid ! He 
said he would exercise it only on one condition, for one 
price : I must marry him ! He would not lift his finger 


DESPERATE APPLIANCE. 


287 


to help my father, unless he was paid ; and I was the 
price he asked ! And at last, after long resistance, I was 
tired out, and I was ill, and I was a fool, and I married 
him. It seemed as if there was nothing else for me to 
do, and so I married him. But then, having bought me 
in that way, he expected me to love him ! Love him ! 
love him ! Oil, Julian ! And because I could not love 
him, because by his very nature he was hateful and loath- 
some to me, he became furious with me, and he struck 
me, and he spat in my face. And after that, because I 
still could not love him, he made it a practice to strike 
me, to spit upon me, to insult me, whenever he was dis- 
pleased. Then I asked him to let me leave him, to let 
me go away from him, to let me go to my father. But 
no, he wouldn’t. He w^ould not let me go, and he said if 
I tried to go in spite of him, he would have my father 
arrested and sent to the mines in Siberia ! So that I 
have had to go on living with him, for four years I have 
been compelled to live with him ; and there is no deliver- 
ance possible for me, except in death — his death or mine. 
But oh, Julian, his beating me is nothing. If you could 
hear him talk to me ! If you could hear the kind of talk 
he delights in in my presence, to shame me and humiliate 
me and disgust me ! He brings his mistresses to stay in 
this house; lie sets his sycophants on to make love to 
me : and then before them he says things to me . . . ! 
Oh, imagine, imagine ! And I have had to bear it all, be- 
cause he holds my father as a hostage. Would you have 
gone out in the storm, would you have risked your life, 
would you have saved him, if you had known? Oh, see 
what you have done, what you have condemned me to ! 
Oh, if you had only known ! If you could only have let 
him drown?” 

The Prince stood across the room, trying to laugh. 
As I paused, he raised his arm, and pointed to the door, 


2S8 


MEA CULPA. 


and said to me, “ Get out of this room. Hold your jaw, 
and get out of the room.” 

I felt Julian’s fingers tighten convulsively upon mine. 
Then he turned to the Prince, and nodding his head at 
him in a way that was not to be misunderstood, he said, 
very low, very slowly, with the drawl that was his habit, 
and with an inflexion that gave his speech the value of a 
thousand threats, “I will thank you, in addressing this 
lady, to be a little more choice of your language.” 

“ Look here, North,” the Prince expostulated, “ I don’t 
w r ant to quarrel with you.” 

“ I am afraid you will have no alternative,” Julian an- 
swered. 

“ Oh, I say ! You don’t mean to tell me that you are 
going to swallow the lies of that she-devil, ” the Prince 
cried. 

“ I must really trouble you to guard your tongue,” Jul- 
ian said. 

To me, by this time, had come the inevitable reaction. 
Exhaustion and depression had followed my excitement, 
and I had sunken upon a chair, where I sat in a state of 
complete nervous and physical collapse. 

The Prince for a moment seemed to hesitate, uncertain 
what to do or say. Presently . . . 

“ I’m under great obligations to you, North,” he began, 
“ and that puts me at a disadvantage. I think, if you 
will fancy yourself in my place, you will grant in common 
fairness that I am at a disadvantage.” 

“ Well . . . ? And then . . . ? ” returned Ju- 

lian, shortly. 

“ Well, I don’t want to quarrel with you, that’s all. If 
any other living man stood in your shoes at this moment, 
it would be bad for him. If any other man had been a 
witness of this scene to-day, I don’t think he’d live long 
to tell of it. But with you it’s different. I can’t forget 


DESPERATE APPLIANCE . 


289 


what happened the day before yesterday ; I can’t forget 
the debt I owe yon ; and that puts me at a serious disad- 
vantage. It puts me at a disadvantage, and it renders you 
comparatively speaking safe. Now, I don’t think you’re 
a coward, and no one but a coward would profit by a sit- 
uation like this. My hands, so to speak, are tied. 
Therefore, I say to you, don’t exasperate me. Of course, 
if you drive me to it, I shall have to quarrel with you, 
whether I will or no.” 

“ Yes, I think you will have to,” said Julian. 

“ Well, it will be your fault if I do,” said the Prince. 
“ But first I want to know if you can listen to reason for 
a moment. Of course I am prejudiced in your eyes be- 
forehand. When a man is arraigned before another man 
by a woman, and especially by a woman whom the other 
man has been in love with, his case is prejudiced before- 
hand. All the same I’ll appeal to your common sense 
and your sense of fair play, to your knowledge of the 
world and of human nature, not to swallow quite as gos- 
pel the ravings of a woman in hysterics. My wife and I 
have had our differences, that I’ll admit at once ; we have 
had our differences, just as all married couples on the 
face of this planet have their differences from time to 
time ; but to-day she lost her head, and she exaggerated, 
and: she said things without appreciating their meaning 
or their gravity, and without reckoning their effect. She 
said things in such a way as to throw an entirely false 
light upon them ; I dare say, in her excitement, she saw 
them in an entirely false light, and didn’t purposely dis- 
tort the truth. But I can assure you of this, she will be 
the first to regret what she has said to-day when she 
comes to her senses to-morrow. All this business — my 
narrow escape from drowning, your rescuing me, and then 
her meeting with you under these peculiar circumstances 
after so many years of separation — all this has wrought 
19 


290 


MEA CULPA . 


upon her nerves, and unhinged her, and sent her into 
hysterics. Now don’t tell me that you’re going to take 
seriously and literally what a woman says when she is in 
hysterics. She’s just as far out of her right mind as if 
she were lying in delirium on a fever bed. And don’t we 
all know that when a person is delirious he always says 
the very opposite of what he would say in his right 
mind? He reviles the people he loves, he conceives a 
passion for those he hates. The whole world is turned 
wrong-end-foremost in his brain ; and no one thinks of 
giving the slightest weight to what he says. Well, it’s 
just the same when a woman’s hysterical. Monica and I 
have had our differences, but on the whole we’re a singu- 
larly happy and a singularly affectionate couple, as she 
will tell you with her own lips when she is herself again 
— to-morrow, say. I just want to ask you whether it’s 
probable that, if I were really anything like the monster 
she’s been describing, is it probable that she would have 
let herself go as she has to-day ? Wouldn’t she have 
been afraid ? Afraid of my making it infernally disagree- 
able for her afterwards ? If I were really in the habit of 
beating her and spitting on her and abusing her gen- 
erally, as she pretends, or if she had thought that there 
was the remotest danger of my doing anything of that 
sort, don’t you think she would have made a little effort 
to hold herself in ? What would the brute that she has 
painted do as soon as you had gone, and he and she were 
alone together ? Hey ? Do you see what I mean ? Now, 
don’t misunderstand me ; I’m not blaming her. I excuse 
her and forgive her on the ground that she had lost her 
head, and was irresponsible, and didn’t in the least real- 
ize what she said. To-morrow she’ll regret it all from 
the bottom of her heart ; she’ll send for you, and she’ll 
contradict every word that she has spoken to-day. All I 
ask of you is that you’ll suspend your judgment in the 


DESPERATE APPLIANCE. 


291 


affair till then — till you have seen her again, and heard 
her speak in her sober senses. There ; now I don’t want 
to seem inhospitable ; but you had better go away now, 
and leave her to me.” 

“ Leave her to you !” Julian echoed, in a sort of gasp. 
“ To you . . . ! ” 

Then he turned to me, and said, “ Monica, you must let 
me take you away from here. You must come with me. 
I will take you somewhere where you will be safe. Then 
I will settle with him afterward.” 

“ Eeally, North, I put it to you as a man of the world, 
aren’t you going a little to far ? To ask my wife to elope 
with you under my very nose ! ” said the Prince. 

“ Of course, Monica, you know I mean nothing of that 
kind,” said Julian. “ But I can’t go away and leave you 
here. You must come with me. I must know that you 
are safe from him, before I can do anything else.” 

“ I don’t think, Monica,” said the Prince, “ that you will 
be unwise enough to accept Mr. North’s invitation. Al- 
ready, if you have recovered yourself a little, you will 
have begun to repent your behavior during the last half 
hour, and to consider its possible consequences. I wouldn’t 
go any further, if I were you. You would only store up 
more matter still for regret to-morrow. I think you had 
better leave us now, and retire to your own rooms. I 
honestly think you had better. The situation is becoming 
slightly strained. By leaving us you will do much to re- 
lax it.” 

Indeed, he was right. Already I had begun to repent. 
Already every other sentiment had disappeared before a 
growing terror of the possible consequences of what I had 
done. I had given way to an uncontrollable impulse ; I 
had leapt without looking. Now, when it was too late, 
after the fact, I began to look. I was appalled by what I 
saw. The Prince was not the man to eschew reprisals. 


292 


ME A CULPA. 


What form would his reprisals take ? ... In the ex- 
tremity of my fear, I had lost all power to think ; but to 
my imagination his revenge presented itself like a storm- 
cloud, formless but black and vast, looming up on my 
horizon. And a sort of instinct told me that now docility 
and obedience would be the better part of valor. 

“Yes,” I said to myself, “I had better do as he bids 
me, and go upstairs.” 

And I rose from my chair to do so. But then sudden- 
ly a new fear came upon me. If I should leave those 
two men alone there together . . ! What might not 

happen ? 

“ Julian,” I said, “ please go away.” 

He did not speak, but his eyes covered me with ques- 
tions and appeals. 

“Yes,” I answered, “I mean it. Please go. You 
need not be afraid. It is the only way you can help me. 
I cannot go with you. You will do no good by staying. 
You will only make it harder for me if you do.” 

The Prince rang for a servant. “ I will drop you a 
line, telling you when to come again, North,” he said. 

The servant entered, and the Prince bade him show 
Mr. North to the door. 

Julian looked at me. 

“Yes,” I said, “go, go.” 

And then he was gone. . . . 

Now — what would my husband do to me ? Would 
he kill me ? I stood shrinking and trembling across the 
room from him. 

“I am dining at the club to-night,” he said, in his 
most matter-of-fact accents, “and so I shan’t see you 
again until to-morrow. Meanwhile you may think over 
the mess you’ve made this afternoon, and consider how to 
straighten it out. I don’t care how you do it, but some- 
how you’ve got to convince our friend North that there 


DESPERATE APPLIANCE. 


293 


wasn’t a word of truth in all you said. The end is the 
only thing that concerns me ; the ways and means are 
your affair. I give you twenty-four hours. I shall write 
to North to call at this time to-morrow. Au plaisir de 
vous revoir .” 

He made a profound bow, and opened the door for me 
to pass. 


II. 


I got up early next morning, and threw open my win- 
dow, and leaned out for a breath of air. It was a pale 
gray day. The sky was completely overcast with leaden, 
low-hanging clouds. The atmosphere was dim with a fine 
bluish mist. And though it was not raining now, I could 
see from the water in the street that it had been doing so 
during the night. The Park stretched away in front of 
me, dark green and distinct in the foreground, but ashen 
and blurred by the mist in the distance ; and it sent forth 
from its wet turf and dripping trees a crowd of racy pene- 
trating odors. My head ached, and every nerve in my 
body seemed to be on edge, and in my breast, like a 
weight, there lay a dull feeling of depression and of ap- 
prehension ; and the sight of the cool shadowy Park, and 
the smell of it, tempted me, so that I thought, “ I will go 
out and walk there. It will soothe me and refresh me.” 

I entered by the gate opposite Salchester House, and 
struck straight across the wet greensward, in the direction 
of Kensington Gardens. The air was exquisitely keen 
and sweet ; it was intensely quiet, save for the rustling of 
the leaves in the breeze and the occasional piping of a 
bird ; and with the exception of a desultory keeper or 
two, the place appeared deserted. 

But in a few minutes I became ’aware of the rapid 
rhythm of footsteps behind me ; and mechanically I 
glanced around. ... A man was advancing toward 
me. ... It took a second for me to recognize 
him. . . . 


DESPERATE APPLIANCE. 


295 


“ Julian ! ” I seemed to cry out ; but I spoke the word 
only in imagination ; no sound escaped my lips. 

I stood still, and waited for him to overtake me. 

“ I’ve been hanging around your house for the last hour 
or two,” he explained quietly. “I couldn’t keep away. 
But I never hoped to see you. I was seated on one of 
the benches below there, when a woman passed at a dis- 
tance. I must have been in a brown study, or something ; 
for it didn’t strike me till a minute ago who she was.” 

I could not speak, I could hardly breathe, for the turbu- 
lent rush and throb of the blood in my veins. "VVe walked 
on, side by side, in silence. He carried a stick in his 
hand, and kept whipping the grass with it. 

“ Oh, it’s hellish ! ” he cried out all at once, bringing his 
stick down with violence. “ The devil himself must have 
plotted it. Wasn’t it bad enough and hard enough al- 
ready ? Good God ! And if they couldn’t leave him 
there, and let him drown, and go to Hell in his own way, 
why did they need to choose me — me ! — to step in and 
pull him out ? I wish I had the chance again.” 

Still I could not speak. We continued to walk on in 
silence. 

By and by, “ Oh, to think, to think ! ” he groaned. 
“ Your incubus was slipping from you ; in another minute 
you would have been free ; and then I — I — had to come 
up and fasten him on again ! Was there ever such a 
devilish mischance ? Merciful God ! To have such a 
thing to remember ! Oh, how you must hate me ! ” 

“ No, no ; I don’t hate you. Don’t think that ; you 
mustn’t think that. You couldn’t help it. How could 
you know ? ” 

“ Oh, if I’d known ! ” he cried. . . . 

Then, after a minute, with sudden fierceness, “ If I’d 
known — by God, I’d have gone out there just to watch 
him drown ! ” 


296 


MEA CULPA. 


Presently, “ Well,” lie went on, with a short, bitter 
laugh^ “you have a lot to thank me for. I’ve been your 
mascot from the beginning, haven’t I ? You see, I’ve had 
a talk with Armidis ; and I know all about it now. Yes, 
you have a lot to thank me for — all the misery that has 
ever come into your life, in short. And yet you used to 
say, we used to think, that it was God who had brought 
us together ! And now this, this caps the climax, crowns 
the good work, paints the lily ! Oh, no, I didn’t know. 
All I knew was that a man was hanging on to that buoy 
for dear life. I’m vain of my prowess as a swimmer, and 
I thought to gain a feather for my cap by going to his 
rescue. My motive was a low one from the outset ; I see 
that now — vainglory. Perhaps that’s why the Lord has 
punished me so.” 

After a while he said, “ Do you see how beautiful the 
effect is, as you look off across the grass, between the trees, 
and the distance gradually melts and merges into the haze ? 
That’s one of the loveliest things in London ; and it’s 
London’s own ; you never find it elsewhere. Whenever I 
see a beautiful thing, there comes a great aching, a sort 
of hunger, in my heart ; and I think, ‘ Oh, if she were 
here, if she were here ! * It’s like fuel added to the fire. 
Thousands of times, as I’ve walked here in the Park, and 
all this beauty has poured in upon me, that longing 
for you to share it with me has come over me, and I 
have thought, ‘ Oh, my cup would run over if she were 
here ! ’ ... Well, the dream has come true ; the dream 

that I always held to be impossible has come true ; and 
here you are ! Here we are together ! But, oh — the differ- 
ence ! Even in nightmares I never dreamed anything so 
horrible as this. That I should be to blame for the . . . 

the . . . well, then . . . the perpetuation of your 

sorrows ! ” 

“ You are not to blame for it. Nobody is to blame. It 


DESPERA TE A PPLIANCE . 


297 


is a part of the inevitable order. What you did was 
noble and heroic. You could not have done otherwise.” 

“ Oh, if my motive had been noble or heroic ! But I 
haven’t even that small satisfaction. I fooled myself at 
the time with the notion that my motive was an unselfish 
desire to save a poor devil from drowning. I see now 
that my motive was nothing more or less than a desire to 
glorify myself, and figure in an heroic attitude. Vanity 
pure and simple. That’s God’s truth about my motive.” 

“ Oh, well, what does it matter? What does it matter ? ” 
I cried. “ It can’t be helped now.” 

“ Tell me this,” he said abruptly. “ What did he . . . 
what did he do after I had gone . . . yesterday? 

Did he . . .?” 

“No,” I answered. “He did nothing. He told me 
that I must see you again to-day, and persuade you not 
to believe what I had said. He has written you to come 
again this afternoon.” 

“You will have hard work to persuade me,” said Julian, 
with a grim little laugh. 

“ Oh, of course, of course. I ought not to have told you ; 
above all not before him. I ought never to have spoken 
as I did. It put me in the wrong. But I was beside 
myself. I couldn’t help it. And now — now that it is 
done, and you know it all, I don’t see why I should try to 
make you think it was false. I have not seen him since.” 

“Well, then, you have seen the last of him, thank 
heaven ! ” 

“The last of him?” I echoed, puzzled, alarmed a 
little. 

“You never shall see him again — never. You shall 
never return to his house.” 

“Ah, but that’s the worst of it. I must.” 

“ Must ! But I say you shan’t. I won’t allow it. It 
was bad enough to know that you were married to him ; 


298 


MEA CULPA. 


but I could bear that. I could bear it because I didn’t 
know the rest, and I had no reason to suppose you were 
unhappy with him. But now ! Now that I do know, 
know it all ! What do you think I am made of ? I never 
can let you live with him again, and I never will. It is 
impossible.” 

“ There is nothing else for me to do. * 

“No, no, I won’t allow you to return to him,” he went 
on, not heeding what I had said. “ Never, never ! I 
don’t ask you to come to me. I can’t invite you to that 
sort of life. It would be as wretched for you in its way 
as this. But I will put you somewhere where you will be 
safe from him. You don’t suppose I can stand still and 
let you go back to a man who beats you ! Beats you ! 
Monica ! Beats you, and spits on you, and insults you ! 
And I away from you, so that I can’t shield you, so that 
I can’t strangle him ! Merciful heavens ! ” 

He took my hand, and for a moment we stood to- 
gether, hand in hand. 

“ You are trembling,” I said. “ What is it ? ” 

“Oh, I don’t know, I don’t know. It is everything. 
It is because I love you so ; because I have never ceased 
to love you, and to hunger for you, and to dream of see- 
ing you again ; and now here you are ! It makes my 
heart leap, it makes me tremble. But oh, the horror of 
it, the horror ! ” 

“ Oh, you love me ! ” I cried. 

“ Yes, yes, yes ! I love you. Oh, God knows I love 
you. If I could take you in my arms now, and crush 
you there, and die with you ! Oh, yes, I love you ! If I 
didn’t love you it wouldn’t matter. It’s the love that 
makes it hideous. Oh, put yourself in my place. It is 
just as terrible for me as it is for you. Fancy ! To 
know that you live in constant peril of being outraged by 
him, beaten by him — you, so frail and beautiful and de- 


DESPERATE APPLIANCE . 


299 


fenceless — you, whom I love ! Oh, Monica ! Imagine 
the hell I have been in ever since I left you yesterday, 
left you to him, alone to his tender mercies ! Why did 
I do it ? Why did I go away ? How did I ever come to 
do it ? To go away, and leave you alone with him, with 
nobody to protect you from him? Oh, I was mad, I was 
out of my senses ; and you commanded me, and I could 
not disobey you then. You said it would make it harder 
for you if I stayed ; and my wits seemed frozen up, and 
I did as you bade me. But now . . . ! Now that I 

have you here, hold you here ! Do you think I will let 
you go ? You have chosen to bear it, to put up with it, 
in silence. But I tell you that I wont bear it. Do 
you hear ? There’s a limit, a limit ! You never shall go 
back. To expose yourself to his foulness and his brutal- 
ity again ! ” 

“ But you don’t realize, you don’t reflect. I never 
would go back to him — I should have left him years ago 
— only, as I told you, he would wreak his vengeance upon 
my father. His influence in Bussia is boundless. He 
would have my father thrown into jail, sent to Siberia, I 
don’t know what. He could do anything he liked.” 

“ That’s an empty threat ; brag, bluster.” 

“I’m .afraid it isn’t. At all events, I don’t dare, I have 
no right, to put it to the test. The mere possibility is 
too appalling.” 

“ I don’t see that it is any more appalling than this 
actual condition of affairs. And, anyhow, it only is a 
possibility, whereas this is a terribly certain fact. Be- 
sides, talk of right ! Why, if anybody’s got to suffer, 
why shouldn’t it be your father ? Why shouldn’t it be he 
as well as you ? Bather than you, by Jove ! He made 
this marriage, didn’t he ? It was his doing, wasn’t it ? 
He was the one who desired it, who forced you into it. 
Well, now, let him pay the penalty of it, and bear the 


3.00 


MEA CULPA. 


brunt of it. He sowed the wind ; let him reap the whirl- 
wind. You are miserable, in order that he may be 
happy. I can’t see that his happiness is of any greater 
importance than yours. One human being is as good as 
another. That’s justice and common sense.” 

“No, no, it is sophistry. You have learned it from 
Armidis. You ought to know me well enough, you ought 
to know human nature well enough, to understand that I 
would only be more unhappy still if I tried to purchase 
liberty for myself at the cost of my father’s. What peace 
would there be for me ? ” 

“ Why don’t you get your father out of Russia ? Out 
of the reach of danger ? Write to him to make a journey 
to Paris. Then . . . you can join him there, and 

Leonticheff may whistle.” 

“ Ah, but the Prince has him watched constantly. At 
the first move he made to leave the country he would be 
arrested.” 

“ Bah ! Such things happen only in melodramas. I 
don’t believe it. Do you ? ” 

“ Yes. Prince Leonticheff is melodramatic. At least, 
I believe it enough to refrain from trying experiments. 
Russia is not like other countries. A man may be ar- 
rested and shut up in prison, in solitary confinement, 
without his friends knowing where he is, for years and 
years — until he dies or loses his reason, perhaps — on 
mere suspicion. It is like the days of the Bastille. You 
simply disappear, that is all. And a word from Prince 
Leonticheff in Russia would be as fatal as a conviction 
by a jury in England.” 

“But he wouldn’t speak the word. After all, why 
should he ? ” 

“ Oh, his motives would be complex. Partly for pure 
malice, partly to give me tit for tat. But I cannot under- 
take to analyze his motives.” 


DESPERATE APPLIANCE. 


301 


“ Well, he may try it. He may do his worst. You 
don’t go back to him, you shan’t. No, not if I have to 
prevent you by main force. You talk of right. Well, you 
have a right to your life, haven’t you ? / have a right to 

it, by heaven ! I shan’t let you forswear it any longer. 
No, no ! ” 

“ Oh, what is the use of saying things like that ? I 
have got to go back to him. I can’t even think of not do- 
ing so. I’ve got to go back to him, and live with him. I 
have no choice or option in the matter. I can’t sacrifice 
my father. So long as my father is alive, there can be no 
escape for me ! ” 

“ Unless . . . unless . . . well, then, unless the 

Prince should be inspired to drop off first.” 

“ Yes. But he won’t.” 

“I don’t know. He came mighty near it the day before 
yesterday. There wasn’t more than an hour left in him 
when we hauled him aboard that tug. If it hadn’t been 
for my infernal meddling . . . ! Why, damn him, I own 

the man ! His life is my property. If I killed him, it 
wouldn’t be murder. It would only be putting him back 
where he was before I interfered.” 

Julian stopped short in his walk, and looked at me. His 
face was white, and very hard and set. His eyes shone 
with a light that somehow made me shiver. 

“ If I should kill him . . . ? ” he repeated very low. 

“ Eh? Suppose I should kill him ? ” 

I stood trembling, with my eyes averted from his. 

“ I should be well within my rights,” he said. “ I should 
simply be undoing what I myself have done. Repairing 
the mischief ! ” 

He paused for a few seconds. Then . . . 

“ Do you wish me to kill him ? You have only to speak 
the word. It wouldn’t be murder. It would be giving 
the devil his due — which I cheated him of the other day. 


302 


ME A CULPA. 


Murder ! Why, it would be pig-sticking ! It would be 
like shooting a mad dog. Isn’t a man justified in kill- 
ing a beast that’s attacking a woman? The woman he 
loves ! ” 

I had grown cold from head to foot ; and there was some- 
thing aching in my throat, that felt like a lump of ice. 
Every word he spoke seemed to pierce me through and 
through, and to set all the quick quivering. . . . 

“ Don’t, don’t,” I gasped faintly. “ I can’t bear it.” 

“ Don’t what ? ” he questioned, with a harsh laugh. 
“ Don’t kill him ? Or don’t talk about it? Why, it would 
be a deed of atonement, of expiation, of penance. It’s the 
only way open to me to retrieve the wrong I’ve done you. 
If you would leave him, if you could leave him, it would 
be different, it wouldn’t be necessary. But if you won’t 
leave him, if you can’t leave him, if he refuses to let you’ 
leave him, and compels you by force to go on living with 
him — why, it’s his own responsibility. If I can escape 
without killing my jailer, so much the better for him. 
But if he places himself before me, his blood will be upon 
his own head, since escape I must and will, coute que coute. 

. . . But there ! In all seriousness, in all conscience, I 
believe it would be right. I believe it’s the only right thing 
to do. Come ! Let us brush aside shams and conven- 
tionalities, and face the truth, God’s truth. We have come 
to a pass in life where the ordinary formulas of the world 
won’t help us. They give way beneath us like the hollow 
shells they are. Our position is a great, a terrible reality : 
we must fall back upon realities, in order to cope with it. 
We’ve got to let go the formulas of the world, and return 
to nature. Let us be frank and honest and unsparing. 
Now tell me, tell me in one word, don’t you wish he was 
dead? Wouldn’t you be glad, wouldn’t it be like news of 
emancipation to you, if you knew that he was dead ? ” 

“ Oh, for that ! Yes, I wish that he was dead. I can’t 


DESPERATE APPLIANCE . 


303 


see that he does good to any human being by living. 
Oh, yes, I should be glad to know that he was dead.” 

“ And now tell me this other thing ; tell me in what 
manner, in what degree, it would be wrong, or criminal, 
or sinful, or anything but holy and righteous for me to 
kill him ? . . . for me to put him out of existence ? 

Look ! He’s a curse to you, he’s a curse to me, he’s a 
curse to your father, he’s a curse to every living thing 
that comes near him. He poisons the air around him. 
He’s a blemish, he’s a danger, on the face of the earth, 
like the dragons, the ogres, of our childhood. Why 
would there be any more harm in removing him, than in 
removing any other mass of evil and corruption ? Why, 
it would be to abate a public nuisance. If you should do 
it with your own hand, it would be a clear case of self- 
defence. Isn’t it the same thing if you do it by proxy ? 
If I do it for you ? Besides, it’s my fault that he’s alive 
at all. I dragged him out of the jaws of death, and now 
he belongs to me. I should only be disposing of my own 
if I made away with him. And then . . . with him 

once for all out of God’s world ! Oh, Monica ! It would 
be ours ! Ours, Monica ! We could begin to live ! We 
could go back to the life and the joy that we’ve lost, that 
he has robbed us of.” 

“ Oh, don’t, don’t,” I entreated him. “ What is the use 
of talking like that? It is so impossible. You won’t 
kill him, you can’t kill him. Yes, I wish he was dead; 
but you cannot kill him. What is the use of talking of 
impossibilities ? We may as well make up our minds to 
bear it. We’ve borne it four years, five years, already. 
We can bear it a few years longer, more or less. And 
after we are dead what will be the' difference ? I sup- 
pose there is some reason for it, some purpose in it; 
there must be. No, no, we must part from each other 
again, and go back to our separate lives. You to your 


304 


MEA CULPA. 


work, your painting ; you will paint great pictures. And 
I ... I to Prince Leonticheff, and I will try to 
wait in patience for the end. The best thing of all would 
be for me to die. I should have taken poison a thou- 
sand times, only I don’t dare, I am too great a coward. 
We will try to forget these last two days, and take up 
our lives again just where they were before it all hap- 
pened.” 

“Oh, if you speak of impossibilities, there is one. 
That is against the whole scheme of nature. As if events 
could be without consequences ! As if we could shape 
our future in imitation of the past, without regard to the 
facts, the causes, that come to alter it. This thing has 
been done ; it can’t be undone ; it’s a seed that has been 
planted : it can’t fail to take root and bear fruit, bitter or 
sweet. We’re not ostriches ; we can’t stick our heads in 
the sand, and ignore it. You might as well try to ignore 
it if your house were afire. And as for forgetting ! Can 
I forget that but for my cursed interference you to-day 
would be free ? Why, it’s the only thing I can remem- 
ber. It fills my whole brain, and burns in every drop of 
my blood. You see . . . you see . . . well, 

then, you see ... I love you.” 

“ Oh, if you had only never known me, never seen me ! ” 
I cried. 

“It would have been better for you, yes. For me, oh, 
Monica ! I prefer this hell to any heaven without you.” 

We were in Kensington Gardens, near the palace. 

“ I am going home now,” I said. “You may put me in 
a hansom.” 

“Home!” he echoed. “Then you haven’t heard me ? 
I have told you that you never shall go back to that house, 
and I mean it. Somehow this matter has got to be ar- 
ranged so that you will never pass another hour alone un- 
der the same roof with him. I could no more stand still 


DESPERATE APPLIANCE. 


305 


here and allow you to go back there, than I could stand still 
and let you walk out under the hoofs of those horses in 
the street. Why, think of it ! At any moment he might 
insult you, he might strike you! How can I live, and 
know that you are alone there with him, exposed to such 
danger? Fire would be nothing to it. No, you shan’t 
go back.” 

“ But there is nothing else to do. Nothing else is pos- 
sible, practicable.” 

“ Yes, there is. There is this. I have got a plan. 
Listen to me. I will go to him. I will go and have a 
talk with him. He’s under a certain obligation to me, 
and in common decency he will have to give me a hear- 
ing. I will go and have a talk with him, and I will bring 
him to reason. I will persuade him to consent to a sepa- 
ration. I will show him that it is folly of the worst kind 
on his part to force you to live with him, and he will 
consent to a separation. Between arguments and threats 
I will guarantee to bring him round.” 

“ Arguments and threats ! You might as well address 
them to a statue.” 

“ Well, let me try. There’s no harm trying. It’s a 
chance. Surely the end is worth it.” 

“No, no. I should be afraid — afraid to leave you and 
him alone together.” 

“ Afraid ? Afraid of what, for heaven’s sake ? What 
do you fear would happen ? ” 

“ Oh, I don’t know. He — he might kill you.” 

“ I don’t think you need be afraid of that” he said, 
with a strange laugh. 

Then, after a little pause, “ See here,” he began. “You 
know Miss Wynn, don’t you? Wasn’t it at her house 
that you met Armidis the other day ? ” 

“Yes.” 

“Well, now, listen. This is what I want you to do. 

20 


306 


ME A CULPA. 


Let me take you to Miss Wynn’s. She lives within five 
minutes’ walk of here. Let me leave you there, with her, 
while I go to see Leonticheff. Then I will come back 
and tell you the result of our interview. That is not ask- 
ing very much, Monica ; do you think it is ? Only that 
you will stay with Clotilde Wynn for an hour or so, while 
I see your husband. She’s a good woman, she’s kind and 
honest.” 

“Oh, no, I can’t do that. I have no right to involve 
her in my affairs. Especially not in my troubles with 
Prince Leonticheff. If it should ever come to an open 
scandal, or anything. . . . Don’t you understand ? ” 

“Well, then, where can I leave you? Where can you 
wait while I am away ? ” 

“ Oh, nowhere, nowhere. It’s utterly useless. I have 
got to go back, I have got to, Julian. There is no use in 
your seeing the Prince. No good can come of it. You 
never can persuade him to anything. What’s the use of 
rebelling against a thing that can’t be helped ? It only 
makes it harder.” 

“ Well, I am going to see him anyhow, use or no use. 
All I ask is where will you wait for me meanwhile.” 

“ I will wait at home, I will wait at Salchester House, 
if you insist upon seeing him.” 

We turned out of the gardens into Kensington High 
Street, and I said, “ Please call a hansom for me.” 

“ Well,” he said, with a shrug of the shoulders, “you 
are determined. But so am I. You will go back to Sal- 
chester House ; and I will seek an interview with Leonti- 
cheff. Then I shall know where to find you when I am 
ready to report. Meanwhile. . . . Can’t you lock 

yourself up in your room ? ” 

“Oh, there is nothing to be feared meanwhile. He 
won’t molest me in any way till this afternoon, when he 
will expect me to see you, you know. But your interview 


DESPERATE APPLIANCE. * 307 

with him ... It will be a failure. I can assure 
you of that beforehand.” 

“ Never mind, never mind. Where there’s a will there’s 
a way, and you needn’t have any doubt of the will in my 
case. If my interview with him should prove a failure, 
why, then, I’ll have to try something else. But I will* 
give him that chance. If he rejects it, let him . . . 

well, then, let him prepare for the consequences, that’s 
all. May I . . . may I drive back with you ? ” 

He had summoned a hansom by waving his stick. 
Now he helped me in. 

“ May I ? ” he repeated. 

“ I think we had better say good-by here, v I answered. 

“ Oh, well, just as you like, of course. It doesn’t make 
much difference. I shall see you again very soon.” 

“ Good-by, Julian.” 

“ Good-by, good-by. Oh, Monica,” he cried wildly, 
“ tell me that^you forgive me.” 

“ I have nothing to forgive you for, Julian.” 

“ Nothing ! You call it nothing ? To have snatched 
him from the devil, and fastened him back again on you ! 
Haven’t you yourself said that so long as he lives . . . ? 
Oh, if he were dead ! To see him lying dead at my 
feet . . . ! Tell me one thing, Monica, will you 
marry me when he is dead ? ” 

“ Oh, he won’t die, Julian. He will outlive us all.” 

“ I don’t know. I’m not so sure. He’s only a mortal 
man, after all. In the midst of life we are in death,” he 
said, laughing curiously. 

“ But it won’t happen. Such things never do happen 
in this world. It’s generally the other person who dies. 
If a man is a brute or a drunkard or in any other way 
a burden or a nuisance to people, he lives to a green old 
age.” 

“ But you haven’t answered my question. If he were 


308 


MEA CULPA. 


dead, you would be my wife, wouldn’t you? Wouldn’t 
you, Monica ? ” 

“ Oh, if he were dead, I would do anything you wished 
me to,” I answered, rashly, in a sudden gush. of passion. 

“ Well, he will either consent to a separation from you 
to-day, or I wouldn’t advise a man to bet very heavily on 
his longevity. I think I shall have to kill him.” 

“ If you could ! But you can’t,” I said. 

“ ‘Who lives shall see,’ ” he quoted. “ Good-by.” 

And the cab drove off. 

To speak the bare truth, I had set my lover on to kill 
my husband ; but it is also the truth that at the time I 
did not in the least realize what I had done. It did not 
once enter my mind to imagine that Julian’s talk of kill- 
ing the Prince might presently lead to the act of killing 
him. I took that talk as the expression of a mood rather 
than an intention. To wish for the Prince’s death was a 
familiar mood to me, and it did not shock me ; but I was 
far from perceiving that we had gone to-day a little be- 
yond simply wishing for his death, that we had ap- 
proached perilously near to plotting it. Familiar as the 
wish was to me, the idea was as unsubstantial, as intan- 
gible, as the idea of any impossible thing. It was as if I 
had wished for the earth to cease revolving on its axis ; I 
might wish it as heartily as you please, but I could never 
for an instant fancy my wish accomplished. I had ac- 
customed myself to consider the Prince as a person 
invincible, perhaps scarcely mortal, certainly, at any rate, 
destined to flourish long beyond my time; and it was 
stronger than a conviction, it was a law and habit of 
thought with me, that in whatsoever conflict might come 
to pass between him and any other human being, he 
would surely not be the sufferer. So, when Julian said, 
“ I think I shall have to kill him,” and other things of like 
tenor, I supposed him to be uttering an emotion in the 


DESPERATE APPLIANCE. 


309 


form of a purpose, but I did not suppose that the purpose 
had any actuality in his mind. If I had supposed the 
latter, I daresay I should still not have been shocked, but 
I should have been filled with terror for Julian. I should 
have felt a terrible confidence not only that he would fail 
in his endeavor to kill the Prince, but that he would get 
himself killed by the Prince instead. 

However, I do not say this by way of excusing myself. 
I am perfectly well aware that it is no excuse. I ought to 
have understood and calculated the results of my speech 
and attitude, and now I must not shirk the responsibility 
of them. Indeed, to acknowledge and assume that respon- 
sibility, is one of the chief objects that I have in making 
this confession. The newspapers have been full of false 
rumors ; public gossip has seized upon every conceivable 
explanation except the right one. It is best on all ac- 
counts that the truth should be known ; and the truth is 
that I, in the blindness of my pain and my passion, had 
set Julian North on to kill Prince Leonticheff. 


III. 


The following letters explain themselves. 

The first, from Prince Leonticheff to me, was written at 
his club in the evening of the day when I had had my 
walk and talk with Julian in Hyde Park. . . . 

“ I am off for what one of your particular admirations 
in literature has called a little tour in France. I cross to- 
night, but shall return within a week. I think I can 
promise to bring you home a surprise.” 

The second, from Julian to Armidis, was written the 
same evening. . . . 

“ I am going to France for a few days. I will write 
again in the morning, explaining the whys and the where- 
fores.” 

And the third is the letter promised by the last. . . . 

“ Dear Armidis : I suppose you are somewhat curi- 
ous to know why I am making this sudden invasion of 
France. I will tell you in three words : for the purpose of 
fighting a little duel with his Serene Highness Prince 
Leonticheff. If I did not say as much in the scrap of a 
note I sent you last night, it was because I preferred to 
. leave you in ignorance of the matter until I had got well 
beyond your reach, where you couldn’t interfere to stop 
me. Do you see? I am at this moment at Calais ; but 
where I shall be two hours hence you will possess no pos- 
sible means of discovering. 


DESPERATE APPLIANCE. 


311 


“ As I tolcl you yesterday, I had had an accidental meet- 
ing in Hyde Park with Monica. We took a walk and had 
a talk together ; and the result of it was to show me more 
clearly than ever that I had contrived to make an ex- 
tremely nasty hash of things. By dragging her husband 
out of the jaws of hell, where a kindly Providence had 
dropped him, I simply meddled with her life to mar it, 
and to perpetuate its wretchedness. That was exceed- 
ingly nice and pleasant, wasn’t it? She informed me in 
as many words that so long as Leonticlieff lived she could 
never look for anything remotely resembling happiness. 
She would not leave him, she could not, she did not dare, 
because he had threatened to visit his displeasure upon 
the head of her father. She must simply continue to en- 
dure his daily outrages and insults, until somebody went 
off the hooks — her husband, her father, or herself. It 
was plain enough that she cordially wished him dead, but 
was hopeless of his dying ; and she could not conceal her 
regret at what I had done, though she is generous and 
bears me no grudge for it. ‘ Ah, yes, if he were dead ! ’ 
she said. ‘ But he w r on’t die. He will outlive us all.’ 
You see, she understands his character pretty well, and 
she knows that he could never of his free will do any- 
thing so graceful as lie down and breathe his last like 
a gentleman. I pleaded with her not to go back to him, 
and to let him do his worst, and make a scapegoat of her 
father if he chose ; but she would not hear of it. By and 
by I saw that I should never be able to shake her deter- 
mination on this point ; so I had to cast about for other 
expedients. I made up my mind, and I told her, that I 
would see the Prince myself. I would see him, and I 
would endeavor in all earnestness to persuade him to 
consent to let his wife live apart from him. I would give 
him that chance. If he refused it — w r ell and good. The 
consequences w r ould be upon his own head. If he refused 


312 


MEA CULPA . 


it, then I would do the only other thing left in my power 
that might in some degree - repair the mischief I had 
wrought, and set myself right with Monica and with my 
own conscience. I would, so far as possible, undo the 
evil I had done, by putting him back where he would 
have been if I hadn’t hired that tug. I would give him 
an opportunity to save himself by consenting to a separa- 
tion from his wife ; and if he refused it, I would kill 
him. 

“ I told her all this, not in the same words, but to the 
same effect ; and she approved. I don’t mean that she 
answered me explicitly, ‘ Yes, go and kill him ; ’ but she 
made it evident that she would not blame me if I did so, 
and she said that if he were dead, she would be happy. 

“ That is all I want to know. 

“ Now, Armidis, don’t fly off the handle, but just listen 
to me quietly for one instant. There are two ways of 
looking at the question of killing a man. There is the 
transcendental-sentimental way, and there is the way of 
reason and of common sense. If you are a sentimental 
transcendentalist, as I am afraid you are, you may say of 
each separate human life that it is an awful and a sacred 
mystery, that it comes into being willy-nilly, we know 
not whence, or why, or to what end, and that therefore to 
tamper with it is to tamper with the secret things of the 
Unknowable. That is one view ; perhaps it is your view ; 
if so, to be consistent, you would not believe yourself en- 
titled to kill another man even in self-defence, and you 
would wish to see malefactors go unhanged. It is a per- 
missible view, but it is scarcely the view of common sense, 
and it is certainly not the view taken by society. Society 
has agreed from time immemorial that under various cir- 
cumstances it is entirely justifiable to put men to death ; 
and death-dealing machinery is a part and parcel of soci- 
ety’s regular equipment — sword-arms and fire-arms, gal- 


DESPERATE APPLIANCE. 


313 


lows and guillotines. If I am a soldier, and you are an 
enemy, and I shoot you down in battle, who dreams of 
blaming me ? If I am a mere civilian, and you attack me, 
am I not authorized by public opinion and by the laws of 
the land to kill you to protect myself ? That is the view 
of the subject taken by most sane inhabitants of the civil- 
ized world : that there is justifiable homicide as well as 
unjustifiable homicide : in other words, that the killing of 
a man is not per se criminal, but that it depends for its 
moral quality upon the particular circumstances of the 
particular case. 

“ Yery good. Now, what I say is this : I say that if it 
has ever been, under any circumstances, justifiable to put 
a man to death — if it can ever be, under any imaginable 
circumstances, justifiable for one man to kill another — 
then it is abundantly justifiable now, and under these cir- 
cumstances for me to kill Leonticheff. He is, as you 
know, guilty of crimes as black and horrible as any that 
any blackguard on this earth has ever committed ; but 
they are crimes for which there is no sort of remedy in 
law. He has fastened himself like a vampire upon an in- 
nocent and defenceless woman ; he is sucking her life out; 
and there is no relief possible for her except in his death 
— no relief, no release. She is his prisoner, and daily he 
loads her with every species of ignominy and misery that 
his ingenuity can invent : he strikes her, he spits upon 
her, he empties his mind of its foulness by vile speech in 
her presence — God knows what else and worse he may do. 
It is exactly as though she had been taken captive by 
North American Indians, or by Sicilian banditti. Would 
I not be justified in killing them for the sake of rescuing 
her ? Who would dream of blaming me ? And in what 
respect is the case of the Indian different to the case of 
the European ? How does the fact that the latter is rich, 
that he can read and write, that he dresses in clothes 


314 


MEA CULPA. 


made by Poole instead of in skins and feathers, that his 
face is the color of raw beef instead of the color of copper, 
and that he talks Tartar instead of Chocktaw — how do 
any of these facts operate to render the killing of him 
more sinful or less righteous than the killing of the 
savage ? 

“ You yourself will not pretend to deny that on general 
principles his death would be a highly desirable thing. 
Suppose that the other day at Greal I hadn’t happened 
to learn that a man was clinging to that bell-buoy ; sup- 
pose that consequently he had been left to drown there at 
his leisure : what would you have said at receiving the 
news of his death? What would any fair-minded man, 
informed of the manner of his life, have said? Come, 
now, be honest, and answer me that. Wouldn’t you have 
said, Thank Providence? Wouldn’t you have said, Good 
riddance to bad rubbish ? You would have said that in 
every way, from every point of view, it was a thing to be 
grateful for. Well, if his death would have been a matter 
for rejoicing under those circumstances, pray tell me why 
not under these ? In the one case he would have died as 
the result of an accident, and you would have cried, Good ! 
In this case he is going to die as the result of design : 
will you not again cry, Good ? You will, if you have a 
single atom of logic and fairness in your composition. 

“ And then, look you, Armidis, I in a sense own the 
man. But for me he would have been dead and damned 
five days ago. If I kill him now, it won’t be like an 
ordinary homicide; I shall simply be undoing what I 
myself have done. Do you mean to tell me that a man 
has not the right, supposing him to have the power, to 
undo what he has done ? That a man has not the right 
to alter his mind, and amend a past error, if amendment 
is possible ? Oh, it’s too ridiculous, it’s too preposterous ; 
you can’t stand up and maintain any such rank nonsense 


DESPERATE APPLIANCE. 


315 


as that. Look : what I did was unmitigated evil. My 
hauling Leonticheff out of the water was an act of unmiti- 
gated evil. Now I say, it is not only my right, it is my 
sacred duty to go back and undo it if I can. Here — I was 
just supposing the case of an Indian ; add to that sup- 
position this further one, that she was on the point of 
escaping from him, of regaining her liberty, and then I, 
I myself, blundered into stopping her, and restored her 
to him : would I not be doubly, trebly, justified in killing 
him, after I realized what I had done ? Do you imagine 
that I am going to live out my life with that hideous fact 
burning forever in my memory — that Monica was within 
an ace of being delivered from him, and that then I 
stepped in to prevent it, and that therefore for every 
future blow he strikes her, for every insult he offers her, 
I am directly to blame ? What have I done to deserve 
such a hell on earth as that? No ! I am made of flesh 
and blood ; and there is a limit to what flesh and blood 
can stand, to what it ought to stand. For my sake, for 
her sake, for the sake of common decency and justice, I 
must mend the mischief by letting the life out of him, 
damn his soul ! 

“ But I must tell you my story in proper order. 

“ I left Monica yesterday morning outside Kensington 
Gardens, and I went home and I found there a note from 
Leonticheff inviting me to call at Salchester House in the 
afternoon, to hear his wife give herself the lie, and retract 
the charges she had laid at his door the day before. The 
man is sadly lacking in humor, and he wrote me that with 
a perfectly straight face. I sat down, also with a straight 
face, and I answered him to the effect that it would not 
suit my convenience to call at Salchester House, but that 
I desired to see him in private about a certain matter, and 
would meet him at the *** Club at any hour he would 
name. I sent my missive by a commissionaire, who 


316 


MEA CULPA. 


brought me back a line from the Prince saying that he 
would be on the spot at three o’clock. At that time ac- 
cordingly I met him there, and we had considerable talk. 
I gave him his chance. But, Armidis, he is quite the 
most impossible person that God has ever created. I told 
him I thought he had better consent to let his wife live 
apart from him, and I advanced a hundred excellent reasons 
in favor of that course ; but the poor man couldn’t seem to 
see it. Finally, therefore, convinced that further argu- 
ment would be wasted, I laid down my ultimatum. I told 
him very frankly that if he couldn’t agree to a separation 
from his wife, I should find myself obliged to kill him. I 
explained the situation to him pretty fully, and he was 
clever enough to perceive that I had abundant motives for 
my enterprise. He said, however, that he was afraid I 
would fail in it, because he had reason to regard himself 
as rather a hard man to kill. I replied that he need give 
himself no uneasiness on that score, and I added that, 
although if I shot him down in cold blood on the spot, he 
would be getting no more than he jolly well deserved, 
nevertheless for the satisfaction of my own aesthetic tastes, 
I had determined to take his life in equal combat ; that is 
to say, I proposed a duel. He demurred a little, talking 
some sentimental rubbish about my having saved his 
life, and protesting that therefore he had no desire to see 
my blood flow ; but when I assured him that there was 
not the slightest danger of his having that experience, in- 
asmuch as I had fully made up my mind to examine the 
color of his, and when I added that I suspected his reluc- 
tance was rather the result of cowardice than of humanity, 
he said he would meet my wishes, and referred me to his 
friend Count Feyghine for the arrangement of the practi- 
cal details. 

“ I know so few men in London at all intimately that I 
was rather hard put to it to find a second for myself. 


DESPERATE APPLIANCE. 


317 


But at last I thought of Coutances, the impressionist, and 
I went to him. He is a Frenchman, and he at once 
consented to serve. He hurried off to see Feyghine, and 
when he returned everything had been agreed upon. We 
transact our business to-morrow morning bright and 
early in the fields outside a little village whose name does 
not matter, and the weapons are to be pistols. Leonti- 
cheff’s second witness will be a Pole named Tchigulski, 
and mine a friend of Coutances’ named Margerie, both res- 
idents of Paris. Naturally enough, we don’t care to let 
the real reason of our difference be known; to avoid 
which we all dine together to-night, in the course of 
the dinner Leonticheff and I quarrel, and a duel is then 
and there arranged. 

“You needn’t have the slightest anxiety on my account. 
I am going to kill Leonticheff. You may take that as a 
deliverance ex cathedra. I do not admit for a moment 
that there is any possibility of the affair going against me. 
You may comfort yourself with the knowledge that I am 
a first-rate shot ; and then as they say in America, my 
‘ dander is ’way up.’ Beside, I have the right on my 
side ; I believe that God is on my side. I shall kill him 
with no more compunction than I should feel in killing a 
grizzly bear. 

“ I leave it to your own discretion whether or not to 
show this letter to her. 

“Good-by. I ought to be home again within three 
days, or a week at the latest. But of course the proces 
verbal may delay me a bit. 

“ Always yours, J. N.” 


And now ! . . . 

Now I realized what I had done. I realized what my 
speech and manner that morning in the Park with Julian 


318 


MEA CULPA. 




had led to, had brought to pass. He and my husband 
had gone to fight a duel ; he had provoked my husband 
to a duel, and he had done so because I had given him to 
understand that I would be glad if the Prince were dead. 
And now — now he would be killed ! The Prince would 
kill him ! And it would be my fault, all my fault. 

My state of mind may be imagined : my remorse, my 
terror, the agony of suspense in which I waited to learn 
for certain how it had gone. 

Remorse? Yes; but not as yet remorse for having 
encouraged Julian to seek the life of Prince Leonti- 
cheff, only remorse for having led him to imperil his 
own. He would be killed, he would be killed ; and it 
was all my fault ! When I said to myself, “ Suppose 
. . . only suppose . . . that by some wonderful 
chance he should not be killed . . . suppose he 

should kill his adversary . . . ! ” — when I allowed 

myself to suppose that, my heart bounded with a joy that 
was fearful in its violence. But that was not because I 
wished Prince Leonticlieff dead ; it was because I wished 
Julian alive. I had forgotten now to wish for Prince 
Leonticheff’s death, to wish for anything, to care for any- 
thing, except just this, that Julian might not be killed. 
Every other thought and emotion had been swept from 
me by the one overmastering prayer, that Julian might 
not be killed. 

“ And yet,” said Armidis, “ that would be better than 
the alternative — better than that he should kill your hus- 
band.” 

“ Better . . . ! ” I cried, aghast. 

“Yes; precisely; better. Because, don’t you see, if 
Julian should kill your husband, the poor lad’s hands 
will be stained with blood ; and for men of sensitive ner- 
vous organization, like his, blood-stains burn as long as 
life lasts. They’re extremely nasty.” 


DESPERATE APPLIANCE. 


310 


“ Oh,” I said, “ if lie only comes out of it alive, it will 
be all I ask.” 

But strong as my wish was, I had no sort of hope. 
For me, it was as if he were already dead. I had sent 
him to his death ! 

“ You see,” Armidis went on, “ at the best you will 
have only changed the form of your misery ; you won’t 
have reduced it ; you won’t have gained anything. At 
the best — that is, of course, the best from your point of 
view: supposing Julian to come off untouched, leaving 
your husband dead on the field — you will simply have 
got rid of a bad husband in exchange for a bad con- 
science. Oh, but a dreadful conscience, my dear ! You 
will find it unpleasant enough to remember all your life 
that you have been the cause of one man’s death ; but 
you will find it unpleasanter still to remember that you 
have made of another man a murderer, that you have 
branded the man you love with the mark of Cain.” 

“He will not be a murderer. If he kills him in a 
duel, it will not be a murder. He exposes his own life to 
equal danger. It is absurd to speak of it as murder.” 

“ Ah, my dear, you are as cunning as a Jesuit. You 
draw a distinction without a difference ; whereas there is 
a real distinction with a difference which you do not ap- 
pear to feel. There are, as one may say, duels and 
duels : duels forgivable, and duels unforgivable ; duels 
venial, and duels mortal. There is the duel into which a 
man is driven by stress of circumstances, and in which he 
desires not the death of his adversary, but the vindica- 
tion of his honor ; such a duel may perhaps be pardon- 
able. But in matters of this sort the spirit is every- 
thing. The spirit ! And Julian’s spirit, the spirit in 
which Julian has so far acted, is simply the spirit of any 
murderer. He makes up his mind to kill Leonticheff, 
and then he selects his method. He selects the method 


320 


MEA CULPA. 


of duelling, just as he might have selected poisoning, just 
as he might have selected the homelier method of stick- 
ing a knife between his ribs. He does this, as he says, 
for the satisfaction of his aesthetic tastes ; he does it in 
truth to the end of dulling and deceiving his own con- 
science. He determines to kill your husband ; and then 
he seeks him out and forces a duel upon him, for the 
sheer sake of killing him, and nothing else. It is mur- 
der. Whoso looketh upon another to desire his death is 
guilty of murder in his heart. The fact that I expose 
my own life to equal danger does not alter the moral 
quality of what I do ; I am less a coward, if you please, 
but I am not less an assassin. These are fine shades ; 
perhaps you cannot see them. You are growing a little 
color-blind. I told you long ago that your marriage with 
Leonticheff would demoralize you; I seem to have proph- 
esied correctly.” 

“ You despise me ! Why do you come here to me, if 
you have nothing but reproaches to heap upon me? If 
whoso looketh upon another to desire his death is guilty 
of murder in his heart, then I am a murderess ten times 
over. How can one help desiring the death of a man 
who blights one’s whole life, who robs one of one’s life ? 
You never loved the Prince ; why should you take the 
notion of his death so hard ? ” 

“It is not, Monica, that I abhor the Prince the less, 
but that I love you — you and Julian — the more. You 
will have done one of two things : you will have caused 
Julian’s death, or you will have ruined his life. Neither 
will be a pleasant memory for you.” 

“ Oh, yes, I know, I shall have caused his death. I 
know that well enough, God help me. You do not need 
to remind me of that. Prince Leonticheff will kill him, 
and it will be all my fault. Yes, I never can forget that. 
I have sent him to his death.” 


DESPERATE APPLIANCE. 


321 


“Well,” said Armidis, “it is a bad business, any way 
you look at it. I can’t pretend to offer you any comfort ; 
the situation admits of none. Now there is nothing for 
us to do but wait and see. Of course it is always on the 
cards that they will come out of it with nothing worse 
than a scratch or two apiece.” 

“ No, they will fight to the death. I am sure of that,” 
I said. 

The following paragraph appeared in that evening’s 
papers . . . 

“EEPOETED SHOOTING OF PEINCE LEONTICHEFF. 

“ A General Press despatch from Paris says : A duel 
was fought at an early hour this morning, in the country 
near Malpierre, between Prince Leonticlieff and Mr. 
Julian North, an artist of London. Pistols were used, 
and but one round exchanged, Prince Leonticlieff falling 
shot through the heart, and expiring almost instantly. 
There were present two surgeons, Comit Feyghine and 
M. de Tchigulski as witnesses for the Prince, and Mes- 
sieurs Margerie and Coutances for Mr. North. The gentle- 
men are said to have quarrelled at dinner last night, but 
it is rumored that there is a woman in the case. The two 
surgeons and the witnesses have signed a declaration 
stating that everything was conducted regularly and in 
accordance with the laws relating to duelling. It is not 
considered probable that the authorities will institute an 
investigation.” 

Oh, as I read that, the great wave of joyous gratitude 
that welled up in my heart ! . . . Not that Prince 

Leonticlieff was dead, but that Julian was alive ! Julian, 
thank God, was alive ! The news that Prince Leonticlieff 
was dead did not at the time impress me or affect me in 
21 


322 


ME A CULPA . 


any way. I could not realize the fact, nor appreciate wliat 
it meant — how utterly and fundamentally it would revolu- 
tionize my life, how it would change for better or for 
worse the whole hue and flavor of my future. I could 
not take it in ; it was a mere detail and side-issue. Noth- 
ing in the world seemed to signify any more, now that I 
knew that Julian had escaped unharmed. 

Armidis said, “ God pity you. God pity you and him. 
Now you have passed through the gate of tears, you 
have passed through the gate of fire, and there is no 
turning back.” 


IY. 


At the moment I could think of nothing else than this, 
that Julian had passed through that fearful peril, and 
had escaped unharmed ; I could think of nothing else, 
and the only emotion there was room for in my heart 
was one of unutterable relief and gratitude. I had sent 
him into the Valley of the Shadow of Death, and he had 
come out unharmed ! That was all, but that was enough. 

By and by, however, I began to repeat to myself, 
“ And Prince Leonticheff is dead ! He is dead, he is 
dead, he is dead ! Do you understand ! ” 

At first, no, I did not understand, I could not grasp it 
or realize it. But then at last, suddenly, the tremendous 
significance of it flashed upon me, and my heart gave 
another great terrible bound. . . . 

“ Oh, he is dead ! ” I cried out. “ He is dead ! I 
never shall see him again ! He never can trouble me in 
any way again ! He is dead ! I am free ! I am delivered 
from him ! Oh, my God ! ” 

“ Free ? ” echoed Armidis. “ My dear, you were never 
less free than you are now, than you must be henceforth. 
Before, you were bound and bowed down by a heavy 
weight of sorrow ; but now and henceforth forever you 
will find yourself fettered body and soul in the toils of 
guilt, in the chains of crime, and they will burn you un- 
ceasingly like red-hot irons. You have built your own 
prison-house, my dear ; you have enclosed yourself with- 
in it.” 

“ Oh, but he is dead,” I repeated. “ Prince Leonticheff 


324 


MEA CULPA. 


is dead. Oil, what more can I ask or want ? He is dead 
and Julian is alive.” 

“ Do you mean to tell me seriously,” questioned Armi- 
dis, “ that the fact of his death brings you no other feeling 
than joy at your deliverance from him ? Doesn’t it shock 
you a little ? Doesn’t it terrify you a little ? He is dead, 
yes ; but that is not all. If that were all, you should have 
my heartiest congratulations, and I should join in your re- 
joicing. But, alas, it isn’t all. It is only the beginning, 
or it is only the end, as you choose to take it. Not only 
is he dead, but it is you who have caused his death, it is 
you who have killed him. And that puts an altogether dif- 
ferent light upon the matter. You have killed him just as 
truly as if you had done it with your own hand. Julian 
has shot him, but it was you who inspired him to do so ; 
you were what the lawyers call an accessory before the 
fact. He was your mere instrument, your agent, your 
cat’s-paw.” 

“ Oh,” I cried, “ what can I care for all that? What is 
the use of quibbling and juggling words? He is dead! 
Just think of that! He is dead. The shadow is lifted 
from my life. He will never darken it any more. I shall 
never — never ! — have to see him, or listen to him, or speak 
with him, any more ! What does it matter how he died, 
so long as he is dead ? Oh, to think that I never need 
fear him any more ! If you could know, if you could put 
yourself in my place, you would understand. If you had 
lived with him, in constant loathing of him, in constant 
dread and terror of him, for five years ! I never knew till 
now how I had suffered. I never realized how heavy my 
load had been, till now that it has fallen off. Oh, it seems 
as if my heart would over-flow. He is dead, and Julian 
is safe and unhurt.” 

“ I wonder whether you have really become as hardened 
as all that,” said Armidis. “ Or is it the Tartar in you, 


DESPERATE APPLIANCE. 


325 


waking at a scratch ! Or is it simply a temporary aber- 
ration of your conscience? There is blood on your 
hands, there is a dead man’s body at your feet ; you are a 
woman, I suppose, and yet you don’t so much as 
shudder.” 

“ Why should you wish me to be a hypocrite? ” I re- 
torted. “ I don’t understand you at all. Nobody ever 
despised Prince Leonticheff as bitterly as you did ; no- 
body ever thought or said worse things of him. But now 
— one would suppose you had loved him like a brother. 
I don’t know why I should feign what I do not really 
feel. I don’t know why I should conceal my true feelings 
from you. It is not as if you were a stranger. You have 
been in my confidence from the beginning.” 

“ Well, wait and see. It is too early in the game to 
foretell how it will end,” Armidis said. 

They brought the body back to England, and buried it 
in the park at Argelby, Prince Leonticheff’s seat in Berk- 
shire. That was in obedience to a wish that he had ex- 
pressed to Count Eeyghine, before the duel. 

The newspapers followed up their first meagre reports 
of the affair with longer ones ; and these three facts were 
well ventilated : that the same Mr. North who had shot 
Prince Leonticheff had, before the Prince’s time, been en- 
gaged to the lady who afterward became the Princess; 
that he was also the same Mr. North who, a few days ago, 
had rescued the Prince from drowning at Greal ; and that 
a day or two after the rescue and before the duel, while 
Mr. North was paying a call at Salchester House, the 
Princess had made a tremendous scene in the library ! 

I lived of course in absolute seclusion, seeing no one 
but Armidis and my servants. I received, however, a 
great many letters ; and I learned that all the world was 


326 


ME A CULPA. 


gossiping about me, and accusing me of having induced 
my lover to kill my husband. I knew too that the word 
“ lover ” was used in its least innocent sense. 

Armidis said, “ Of course, that is no more than you are 
bound to expect. Scandal has marked you for its own. 
That was inevitable, in the circumstances.” 

I answered, “ It is a matter of total indifference to me. 
Or, rather, no ; I am glad of it. Because now I shall feel 
at perfect liberty to do as I choose in all things . . . 

since they have said the worst they can say of me, al- 
ready.” 

Meanwhile we had had but a single word from Julian 


“ Dear Armidis : You have seen by the papers how the 
thing has gone. I shall not be coming home quite yet 
awhile. I would rather not see anybody just yet. I want 
to wait till I have got a little used to it. I feel very queer. 

“ God bless you. Please be all you can to her, do all 
you can for her, in these trying times. I hope she is 
happy. 

“J. N.” 

“ He feels very queer,” said Armidis. “ I should hope 
so. He’d be very queer if he didn’t. He has killed a 
man.” 

“ He has killed a man in a perfectly fair duel,” I an- 
swered. “ The man was a monster, and he killed him in 
a duel. There is no reason why he should feel anything 
except that he has done a good deed. You speak as if he 
had stabbed the man in his bed.” 

“ The difference is only one of form, not one of matter. 
Poison is poison, whether it be concealed in a finger-ring ) 
or openly displayed in a bottle labelled with a death’s 
head.” 


DESPEllA TE A PPLIANCE. 327 

“ Oli,” I cried, “ you are what Julian called you. You 
are a transcendental-sentimentalist.” 

“ Mercy upon me ! What a dreadful name ! Crusher ! 
But never mind, my dear. I am your true friend. And 
though you seem to me very hard and strange, I could not 
love you better if I were your father.” 

My father ! My father, upon reading the report of 
Prince Leonticlieffs death in the Russian newspapers, had 
written me the cruellest of cruel letters, taking my guilt 
for granted, and denouncing me not only as the murderess 
of my husband, but as the first woman of our family to 
bring a blot upon its scutcheon. 

But I did not mind all this especially ; not the scandal 
of the world ; nor the cold morality of Armidis ; nor the 
bitterness and injustice of my father. Prince Leontieheff 
was dead ! He had disappeared from out of my life. I was 
free. The burden that had bowed down my shoulders, 
the fear and the disgust that had filled my heart, for so 
many years, were gone. There is no reason why I should 
disguise the truth. Not only had his death not grieved 
me, it had not even shocked me in any degree; it had 
simply relieved me ; I was glad of it. 

What I wished most for was to see Julian. I did not 
know when he would return, but I counted the hours. I 
longed to see him with my eyes, to touch his hand, to 
hear his voice, I longed to feel him near to me. The 
longing was acute and unceasing, like a spiritual hunger. 
I longed for an opportunity to pour out for him the great 
store of love and gratitude that were garnered for him in 
my heart. He had taken such an awful risk for my sake, 
he had rendered me a service so immeasurable ! The de- 
votion of my life should be his henceforth ; but nothing, 
not even that, could ever adequately pay him, or discharge 
my debt. I had a thousand things to say to him, a 
thousand plans to propose to him, when he came home. 


32S 


MEA CULPA . 


But when would he come ? Why did he delay his com- 
ing, like this ? I should have supposed he would be as 
eager to see me, as I was to see him. Then why did he 
not come home ? 

“ The time seems very long. Will he never come ? ” I 
asked of Armidis. 

“Oh, he feels queer, he feels queer, you see,” Armidis 
repeated. “He has killed a man. Therefore he has a 
state of mind.” 

“ Oh, will you never finish harping on that string? ” I 
cried in anger. 

“Well, suppose he should come, suppose he were at 
home at this very instant — you couldn’t see him, you 
know. That wouldn’t do at all.” 

“Wouldn’t do . . . ?” 

“Why, consider the proprieties! How could you 
with any sort of countenance have a meeting with a man 
hot and red-handed from killing your husband? You 
must observe the conventions of your widowhood. What 
would people say ? ” 

“ It makes me smile to hear you preaching the conven- 
tions and the proprieties, you of all men. I don’t care 
what people would say. They can say nothing worse 
than they have said already.” 

“ Quite so. But they don’t more than half believe what 
they say at present. If you and Julian should be known 
to have met, on the other hand, it would be confirmation 
strong as proofs from holy writ.” 

“ Well, I don’t care. I don’t care what people say or 
believe. But I don’t see why we could not meet without 
anybody’s knowing it at all.” 

“ There speaks the woman, who lovetli mystery, subter- 
fuge, intrigue. A secret meeting ! Yes, it would be ro- 
mantic. But I don’t think it will come to pass. I doubt 
if Julian will return to England for many a long day.” 


DESPERATE APPLIANCE. 


329 


“ What do you mean ? Have you heard from him ? 
What is it ? ” 

“Yes, I had a second note from him this morning. 
Here . . 

He handed me this note . . . 

“ Dear Armidis : Please tell Calebs to pack some 
clothes in the yellow leather box, and send them to me 
at No. 32, Rue de Bourgogne, Paris. I am thinking of 
going away somewhere, I don’t know just where. On 
some accounts I should like to come to London, on others 
I dread doing so ; and on general principles I believe I 
had better keep away. I don’t know just what good 
I could do by being there, and I can imagine a deal 
of harm. I never dreamed that I should feel like this. 
I can’t get it out of my mind. Sometimes I feel as if I 
would give my life just to see her for a little while, and 
then at others I feel as if I could not bear to meet her. 
It is the same about you. Sometimes I long for a sight 
of you, a word with you, and then at other times I shrink 
from the mere thought. You see, it has upset me. But 
I shall get over it, and be myself again, presently. So 
long as I can feel sure that she is the better off for what 
I have done, I cannot repent it. I have twenty times 
been at the point of coming to London, and then at the 
last moment I changed my mind. 

“ Always, J. N.” 

“ You see, it is as I said,” commented Armidis ; “ he 
has a state of mind. You may answer that he had a 
state of mind before he did it. Then he remembered 
that he had saved your husband’s life, and that made him 
writhe ; but now he remembers that he has taken it, and 
that is worse. I have never taken anyone’s life myself ; 
but I know how I should feel. Imagination ! The 


330 


ME A CULPA. 


whole color of the world would be changed for me ; I 
should feel the mark of Cain perpetually scorching my 
forehead ; I should feel cut off utterly from the fellowship 
of other men and women, of those who hadn’t done what 
I had done. It would be an experience of a nature to 
shake and overturn my life from its deepest roots. It 
would alter the very essence of my soul. I should feel 
that I had changed my skin, and become a member of 
another race. A race apart. You have called me a 
naughty name ; you have called me a transcendental- 
sentimentalist. But the point is that Julian is another. 
Unless I am very much mistaken his state of mind is like 
what I have been describing. Blood has been spilled 
upon him. It is like sulphuric acid ; first it eats into the 
skin, smarting like fire ; then it will eat through the 
bones and the muscles, into the inmost heart. Poor 
Julian ! ” 

This was in the evening, about ten o’clock, at Salclies- 
ter House. A little later that same evening Armidis’s 
man, Calebs, called, and asked to see his master. When 
Armidis returned to me, he looked very grave. 

“ He has come home,” he said, and handed me a sheet 
of paper . . . 

“ I could not stand it any longer. I thought I was go- 
ing away, but I have come home. They tell me you are 
with her. I should like to see you whenever she can 
spare you.” 

It was in Julian’s handwriting. 

“ I think I had better go to him at once,” said Ar- 
midis. 

“ Yes. I will go with you,” I said. 

“ Oh, no ! ” he cried. 

“ Yes. I must. I want to see him.” 


DESPERATE APPLIANCE. 


331 


“But consider. . . . It is the height of impru- 

dence.” 

“You used to tell me to throw prudence to the dogs.” 

“But suppose — suppose he should not wish to see 
you?” 

“ I am going with you,” I repeated. And I ordered 
my brougham. 


Y. 


Armidis opened the door of the house with his latch- 
key, and stood aside for me to enter. I hastened through 
the hall, into the studio, where I took for granted that 
Julian would be waiting. The room was lighted by 
candles, a light soft and rich, but dim, so that at first 
objects and shadows were not quite distinguishable. But 
after a minute I saw him. He was seated in a deep arm- 
chair, before the empty fireplace. His head was thrown 
back, and his eyes were closed, but I did not think he was 
asleep. His profile was toward me; the skin gleamed 
waxen-wliite in the candlelight, and the cheeks and 
temples looked thin and sunken. I remained for an in- 
stant near the door, without moving or speaking. 
Armidis came in, up to my side, and stood there till his 
glance, wandering, rested on Julian. Then he nodded to 
me, and stole out of the room on tip-toe, shutting the 
door behind him. 

“ Julian ! ” I called, very low. 

Slowly he opened his eyes, and turned his face in my 
direction. At first its expression was blank and puzzled, 
as if he had been suddenly recalled from a brown study, 
and did not recognize me ; but all at once it lightened ; 
and he cried, “Oh! ” and sprang up, and advanced toward 
me. . . . 

I stretched out my hands. Oh, how full my heart was ! 
How tumultuously it throbbed ! 

But when he had taken three or four steps, he stopped, 
suddenly, shortly. He stood motionless for a second, 


DESPERATE APPLIANCE. 


333 


staring at me with eyes that were almost vacant. Then a 
sort of spasm passed over his face, and he cried “ Oh ! ” 
again ; but this time it was like a sharp cry of pain. He 
made a sort of convulsive gesture with his arm, and turned 
around, and w T ent back to his chair, dropping into it like 
something inert, rather than seating himself with the 
elasticity of life. He turned his face quite away from me. 

I hurried up to him. . . . 

“Julian! What is it? What is the matter!” I 
asked, in fright and anguish. 

“ Oh, I don’t know, I don’t know. I can’t help it,” he 
answered. There was something awful in the quality of his 
voice ; a note that chilled me with unimaginable terrors. 

I knelt down beside him, and looked up into his face. 
But he tinned his eyes away from mine. 

“ Julian ! What is it ? ” I entreated, in a moan. 

Then he seemed to be seized by an impulse of tender- 
ness. He put out his hands, and took mine, pressing 
them very hard, and he looked into my eyes with a look 
of great love, and he said, “ Oh, my darling ! My dar- 
ling ! ” But instantly after that, the same spasm that I 
had seen before passed over his face, and he dropped my 
hands, and he shrank back into his chair, as if to avoid 
even the touch of my garments, and his eyes became as 
cold and impenetrable as steel, and his face somehow 
looked to me as if it were infinitely far away. 

“ Oh, Julian, what have I done ? What is it ? ” I asked 
again. 

He gave a short laugh, and appeared to recover him- 
self. “ Oh, it’s nothing,” he said lightly. “ Nothing, 
except that I feel queer. It’s been an experience, and I 
feel queer. But it doesn’t matter. If you are happy, if 
you are glad, if it’s been a service to you, it doesn’t mat- 
ter how I feel. I dare say I shall get over it.” 

“ Oh, Julian, it isn’t only that I am glad. It isn’t only 


334 


MEA CULPA . 


that you have rescued my life from a horror, and given it 
back to me. But it is the awful peril you encountered 
for my sake, the dreadful danger that you faced. "What 
if you had been hurt ! What if you had not come back 
to me ! The thing that I am most thankful for, that I 
never can thank God enough for, is that you have come 
back safe and unharmed. Julian ! ” 

He took my hands again in his, and murmured some- 
thing inarticulate ; while his eyes rested with mine for a 
minute, and seemed to devour me. It was as if for that 
minute our souls went out to each other, and met and 
mingled. But then his withdrew itself from mine ; his 
eyes became hard and impenetrable again ; he put away 
my hands, and he said, “ You don’t realize. You don’t 
realize what I have done. If you realized that, you 
would understand.” 

“ I do realize it, Julian. I know what you have done. 
What you have done is good, wholly good. It is good 
for everybody, good for the whole world. No harm, no 
pain, no evil, nothing but good, can come to any human 
being from what you have done.” 

“ Except to myself. For me . . . oh ! ” He threw 
out his arms, and shuddered. “ For me, it’s been my 
undoing.” • 

“ Oh, why do you talk like that ! Why do you feel 
like that ? What do you mean ? ” I cried. 

“ I have killed a man. I have shot a man down in 
cold blood. I have seen him stagger, and totter, and 
turn half way round, and fall. I have heard the sicken- 
ing noise he made as he fell, the dreadful noise of his last 
breath, the dull noise of his body striking the turf. I 
have seen him lying before me, red and white and dead. 
I have seen nothing else, I have heard nothing else, for 
eight days. Oh, it is horrible ! ” He put up his hand, 
shielding his eyes, as if to shut out a vision. 


DESPERATE APPLIANCE. 


335 


“ Oh, my God ! ” I cried. “If it has made you feel 
like this ! Oh, what shall I do ? You said — you said it 
would be like shooting a mad dog ; you said you would 
feel no more compunction than in killing a grizzly bear. 
What you have done ! You have done a thing wholly, 
entirely good. You have put an evil thing out of exist- 
ence. You have removed an evil thing from the world. 
That is what you have done.” 

“ Yes, yes, I know that. I am sure of that. He was 
bad ; it is a good thing that he is dead, that he is out 
of the way. The only doubt is whether it was a good 
thing that I should kill him. Whether that was not a 
greater evil still. It is a good thing that he has been re- 
moved ; but was it my place, was it my business to re- 
move him ? After all, you see, he was a man. God made 
him, God kept him alive, God must have had some reason 
for it all ; and I feel as if I had interfered. He was a 
man, yes, after all, a man. I never realized that, I think, 
until I saw him fall down dead before me. Then . . . ! 

Oh, if you had seen him there ! It makes you feel queer, 
very queer, to see a man fall dead, and to know that you 
have killed him, that it is your doing. To see him lying- 
dead there, and to know that he will never breathe or 
move again, and to realize that you have done it ! To re- 
alize that you have done it, and that you can’t undo it — 
never, never ! It’s rather awful. It upsets you, it over- 
turns you, it changes your life utterly, in a single minute, 
changes its whole complexion. You see,” he added, with 
a smile of irony, “ one kills a man so rarely ! It is an ex- 
perience. I dare say if one had killed a great many men, 
one would get used to it. But it’s the first step that 
costs. For me — I think in killing him I killed myself. 
I have felt as if a new self, a strange self, were in posses- 
sion of me ever since ” 

His manner, his voice, the character of what he said, 


336 


MEA CULPA. 


seemed to indicate great weariness, almost apatliy ; but 
an apathy, I felt, which was but the extreme point of 
profound and strenuous inward emotion. 

“ And I have brought this upon you ! ” I groaned. “ I 
have brought you to this. But it can’t last, J ulian ; it 
mustn’t last ; it is not as if you had done a wrong thing. 
You must let me, since I have brought it upon you, since 
it was for my sake, you 'must let me . . . you must 

let me comfort you, restore your happiness. The words 
sound so meaningless, but you understand. I love you, 
and I owe you everything. My life is yours now forever. 
Oh, you can’t be unhappy long. It has shocked you, it 
has made you ill. But that will wear off ; you will get 
well ; I will make you well. Do you remember what you 
said ? The world would be ours ! It is ours now. There 
is nothing between us.” 

“Do you remember what the Lord said to Cain ? And 
71010 thou art cursed from the eai'tli ! Those words have 
been ringing in my ears ever since. And now I am 
cursed from the earth ! That is how I feel.” 

“ Oh, to compare yourself to Cain ! You are mad, Ju- 
lian. You are morbid. You have killed a man in a duel. 
A perfectly fair duel, where he had an equal chance of 
killing you. Hundreds of men have killed men in duels 
before this, and they have not felt as you feel. . . . 

They have lived perfectly happy lives afterward.” 

“ Well, I don’t appear to be that sort of man. Any- 
how, it is different. It was a duel, and it was fair enough, 
I suppose ; but it wasn’t an ordinary duel. It was a duel 
which I devised and manufactured simply and solely to 
the end of killing him. It wasn’t a duel into which I 
was forced, nor one into which I entered impulsively, in 
hot blood. It was a duel into which I forced him, and 
into which I entered with my blood as cold and as serene 
as water. It was a duel which I concocted and brought 


DESPERATE APPLIANCE. 


337 


to pass just with this one thought in my head, that I 
would kill him. But that doesn’t matter much. The 
trouble is that I can’t get it out of my mind, I can’t chase 
it from my memory, I can’t see anything else wherever I 
turn. The only thing I can see is his dead body lying 
there on the grass, limp and ghastly, with his white shirt 
all red with blood, and his eyes staring up with such a 
sickening, glassy look ! I believe I shall never be able 
to see anything else as long as I live. Oh, my God ! ” 

I knelt at his side, speechless, helpless, heart-sick, in 
despair. 

“ It is funny,” he said. “A few days ago I was in an 
agony of mind because I had saved his life ; now I seem 
to be in a worse agony because I have taken it.” 

Just the words that Armiclis had spoken of him ! 

“ I tell you all this very freely,” he went on. “ I am 
sorry to do so. I never meant to tell you. But you have 
come here. I can’t keep silence. I suppose I had better 
tell you the truth.” 

“ Yes, yes,” I answered, automatically. 

I say to myself that he was a brute and a devil, and 
that his death means freedom and life for you ; but it 
doesn’t do any good. I suppose you will think me weak, 
weak and sensational. I can’t help it. Perhaps . . . 

perhaps . . . well, then, perhaps it is the artistic 

temperament.” He smiled grimly. 

“ I can think nothing but good of you,” I said. 

After a long silence, he began, “ Yes, there’s no getting 
around that. It has altered the whole complexion of my 
life. I am a different being, a different kind of being. I 
have crossed the line, I have passed the pale. I have 
been initiated into mysteries of which other men know 
nothing, dream nothing. I can have no fellows any more. 
I am alone, apart. The ordinary purposes of life, the or- 
dinary occupations, pleasures, companionships, things to 
22 


338 


MEA CULPA. 


hope for, things to fear, to avoid— they have all lost their 
meaning for me, their meaning and their color and their 
savor. Or I have lost myself. It is the same thing. I 
have not been myself, known myself, felt myself for a 
single instant since. It isn’t pleasant. I know it would 
be to throw you back into the depths of your great mis- 
ery ; and yet, while I am telling you the truth, I may as 
well tell you this, that there have been moments, many 
moments, when I have felt that I would sacrifice you, that 
I would give up heaven and earth and everything, that I 
would sit still and let them cut off my legs and arms and 
sear my body with red-hot irons, if I could only recall it 
and undo it, and be my own self again as I was before it 
happened. There ! I was unhappy enough then, God 
knows ; but I did not have this awful sense of difference, 
of isolation, from the rest of men. But now — well, it is 
as I said — I am alone, apart.” 

“You are not alone, you are not apart. You shall 
never be alone or apart. I am with you. I will never 
leave you. If it has removed you from the ordinary plane 
of life, has it not removed me with you, at your side ? 
And so long as we are together, what does anything else 
matter? Aren’t we sufficient to each other? You are 
sufficient to me. It is all I ask. Just to spend my life 
beside you, in devotion to you ! ” 

“ Yes, you are with me ; that is true enough. We were 
partners in it, after all. We planned it together. Yes, it 
takes us two, just us two together, and separates us from 
all other human beings, from all human fellowship and 
communion. They may not feel it, but we will, we must. 
They will see in us only a man and a woman ; but we 
will know ! It unites us as nothing else ever could have 
done ; it binds us together with chains.” 

“ Well, so much the better ! ” I cried. “ I don’t believe 
that what you say is true ; I don’t see liow it can, or how 


DESPERATE APPLIANCE. 


339 


it should, separate us so from other people ; I am sure 
that this feeling of yours will wear away ; it is only a 
first result ; the final one must be different. But sup- 
pose that I am wrong, and you are right — so long as we 
have each other ! I cannot wish for anything more.” 

“ Ah, but . . . ! It unites us, yes ; it joins us to- 

gether, yes ; but at the same time it has another effect, a 
contrary effect. It binds us together indissolubly, and 
yet it divides us utterly, it puts us utterly, irrevocably 
asunder.” 

“ Asunder ? I don’t miderstand that,” I said. 

“ Oh ! ” he cried wildly, in sudden passion, starting up 
from his chair. “ Don’t you see ? Look ! Look ! ” 
He pointed to the floor, between us, staring with wide 
horrified eyes, his face white as paper. “ Look ! There 
is a dead body between us ! There is blood between us ! 
We cannot cross it — never, never ! Because it is there, 
it is immovably there ! It must keep us always, always 
apart. And yet we cannot leave it, we cannot go away 
from it, all our lives we must remain there, one on either 
side of it ! Always within sight of each other, yet never 
near enough to touch, never daring to speak, because of 
the awful dead thing that lies between us ! Oh, my God ! 
God help us ! We are like two slaves, condemned to 
carry the same burden, a heavy burden, a ghastly burden 
— a corpse ! a dead man’s body ! — condemned to carry it 
between us, one at each end, yet never allowed to ex- 
change a word, never allowed to touch each other’s hands, 
never a word or touch of sympathy, of compassion, of 
encouragement ! ” 

I went up to him, and put my hand upon his shoulder. 
“Oh, Julian, for mercy’s sake, calm yourself,” I begged 

him. 

“ Don’t touch me ! ” he cried harshly, starting away 
from me. But then, instantly, “Oh, forgive me ! It was 


340 


ME A CULPA. 


tlie lioiTor of it. Forgive me ! ” And suddenly he threw 
his arms around me, and strained me to him, covering 
my face with kisses, and repeating my name, “Monica! 
Monica ! Monica ! ” 

But then, as suddenly as he had seized me, he released 
me, and moved a few steps away. 

“We have gone from the devil to the deep sea, I am 
afraid,” he said. “We have got rid of Leonticheff, but 
we’ve got this horror in his place. We have only changed 
one misery for another. What sort of world is this ? On 
what principle does God distribute His punishments and 
His rewards? Leonticheff never suffered for his sins. 
He sinned, and sinned, and sinned again, and was never 
the worse for it, was he? We sin just once, if it was a 
sin to kill him, and see how we are overwhelmed ! The 
punishment is capricious and one-sided. Ten guiltier 
men than I go free ; why must I suffer ? It isn’t fair. 

“ You mustn’t suffer, Julian ; you shouldn’t suffer ; you 
won’t suffer, after a little while. It wasn’t a sin to kill 
him. Your suffering is only for the moment. It is a 
shock. It will pass. It must pass. If you love me, if 
you care for my love, you cannot be unhappy long.” 

“ Ah, that’s just the point ! If I love you ! ” 

“You do love me, don’t you? ” 

“ I don’t know.” 

“ You don’t know . . . ! ” I faltered. 

“ I don’t know. I’m not sure. Or, rather, yes, I do 
love you, only . . . it’s this way. Everything is so 

changed. All my feelings are so different. Sometimes 
I love you ; sometimes I think that my love is dead, that 
I have killed it, that it has been destroyed, swept away, 
in the general overturn. That is the worst part of the 
whole affair. It seems to have killed, to have burned out 
from my heart, every other feeling, every other thought 
or interest. Yes, at moments I love you, I seem to love 


DESPERATE APPLIANCE. 


341 


you more entirely than ever before ; then at other mo- 
ments the horror of the thing simply overwhelms me, and 
obscures my love, and I cannot find anything in me but 
indifference toward you. I think of you, I speak your 
name, I picture your face before me, but they do not move 
me or affect me any more than the thought or the name 
or the face of a stranger would. I am speaking the truth 
brutally, but you may as well understand it first as last. 
Then at other times still, it does not stop at that. The 
horror of it mounts and mounts, till it seems to penetrate 
every atom of my brain and body ; and then I am no 
longer indifferent to you, but my horror includes you in 
it, and I . . . well, then ... I hate you. Then 

by and by my love comes back, and so it goes, alternat- 
ing in waves. Day, evening, night ; love, indifference, 
hate.” 

“ Oh, merciful God ! I have made you hate me ! ” I 
cried. 

“No, no, no, not that. You have not made me hate 
you. I don’t mean that I do hate you, either, exactly ; I 
mean simply that the horror which is upon me sometimes 
includes you, as it includes every other thing, person, 
circumstance, in any way connected with what I have 
done. The boat I crossed the Channel in, the inn I 
stayed in at Calais, the people I passed in the streets 
the day before the duel, Malpierre, and the field in which 
we met, and the grass we stood on, and the men who 
were present, the very sky above our heads, the air we 
breathed — my horror is over all these things ; and some- 
times, not always, it includes you. . . . That is the 

worst of it all.” 

“ Then . . . that . . . that is why, when I first 

came into the room, and called you, and you were coming 
toward me, that is why all at once you started back, and 
turned away from me ! You hate me because it was I 


342 


MEA CULPA. 


who set you on to do it ! Oh, I deserve it, I suppose I 
deserve it.” 

“ No ! ” he cried, coming to me, and taking me in his 
arms again, and drawing me down at his side, upon a 
sofa. “ No, you don’t deserve it, and it isn’t so. It was 
only an illusion ; but now when I see you, yourself, really 
here near to me, and know that it is you, your own real 
self, no, I feel nothing in the world but just love for you, 
and joy in you. Everything else goes ; and so far from 
my horror at that thing obscuring my love, my love 
chases away the horror. Oh, it is you ! And you love 
me ! And you will be mine ! You will be my wife ! 
There is nothing to keep us apart any longer ! ” 

“ Nothing, nothing ! I will *be your wife. I will be 
anything and everything to you that a woman can be to 
the man she loves, to the man who has faced death for 
her, and delivered her from the evil that was over her 
whole life. Oh, you will not be unhappy. Tell me, 
promise me, you won’t.” 

“ Unhappy ! I can’t believe I have ever been unhappy. 
I am the happiest man in the whole world,” he said. 
Then he laughed, and added, “ I’m sure you never can 
guess what I thought of just then.” 

“What? Tell me.” 

He looked at me with smiling eyes for a moment ; and 
then he said, “ Do you. remember ? What we used to 
comfort ourselves with in the old days in Paris ? Entre 
nous le passe ne valait pas le diable ; Vavenir sera delec- 
table ; en attendant jouissons du present ! ” 

“ Eh Men, done, jouissons en /” I whispered, laughing 
for happiness. 

And then . . . 


VI. 


The next morning, at Salchester House, I received 
this letter from him . . . 

“ No, it is no use. After I left you, it all came back 
upon me, ten times stronger than before. You see, I was 
not quite frank last night. I told you nothing but the 
truth, yet I did not tell you the whole truth. I told you 
what I felt, I did not tell you what I thought. My feel- 
ings, you said, would pass away ; I did not contradict 
you ; indeed, I tried to lull myself into believing as you 
did for the time ; but down deep I knew they would not 
pass, I knew they could not. If they were feelings alone, 
and stood by themselves — rested upon themselves — yes, 
they would most likely pass. A mere wound must heal 
after a certain lapse of time ; but where it is not a mere 
wound ? Where it is a sore, the consequence of a poison 
in the very composition of the blood ? The truth is that 
they are not simply feelings ; they do not rest upon them- 
selves ; they rest upon a conviction, they are the conse- 
quences of a conviction — a conviction that has within a 
few days become as deeply rooted and as vital in me as 
my life itself. That is what I concealed last night, what 
I tried to forget last night. 

“ It has come upon me, Monica, very late in the day 
and very suddenly, you may say, but not with less force 
or staying powder because of its tardiness or its sudden- 
ness ; it came upon me with overwhelming force, like a 
voice from the sky, the very second I saw him fall — this 


344 


ME A CULPA. 


conviction : that I had been deceiving myself and making 
my conscience drunk with lies and sophistries, and that, 
in bare reality, I had meditated, compassed, and now 
committed a crime, a great, terrible, irremediable crime. 
When I saw him turn, and totter, and fall — it was as if 
the skies opened, and the voice of God cried out, And noiv 
thou art cursed from the earth , and the hand of God 
placed a seal upon my brow ! Why did God let me go so 
far ? Why did He not open His skies, and let me hear 
His voice, before it was too late ? Or, having allowed me 
to go so far, why could He not have allowed me to go on 
forever? Why, when it was too late, let me hear His 
voice at all ? 

“ Anyhow, I must try to explain it to you. 

“ We, you and I, were in a terrible situation ; that is 
undeniable ; a situation partly thrust upon us, partly of 
our own making ; and one as heavily fraught with pain as 
almost any human situation can be. But we had this 
one consolation, though we did not realize how great a 
consolation it was — we were innocent, our hands were 
clean. So, though we did not know it, our situation was 
not altogether hopeless. I see now — it is a truism, but 
for me it is a new discovery — I see that so long as a 
man’s own soul is innocent, his own hands clean, no situ- 
ation in which he can be placed is altogether hopeless. 
But ours seemed hopeless to us ; our pain obscured our 
vision ; it seemed hopeless to us, and it seemed intolera- 
ble ; and we looked about for a way out of it. No, we 
were hemmed in on all sides ; only at one point we saw 
what looked like a way out of it, we saw one little open- 
ing. There was just one path, one gate, through which 
we could make our escape ; we did not stop to question 
whither that path led, whether possibly it might lead to 
another situation worse and more intolerable still ; it was 
a way out, and we took it. 


DESPERATE APPLIANCE. 


345 


“ Well, the one gate we saw was the gate of sin, the 
path was the path to hell. That is where I find it has 
brought me, anyhow. We had been innocent, our hands 
had been clean ; but after we had passed that gateway, 
we were guilty, our hands were stained with blood ! We 
fought the devil, as the saying is, with fire. We endeav- 
ored to overcome one evil with another evil, a greater evil. 
It didn’t pay. For me, I confess, I have got the worst of 
it. We have exchanged a situation that was bad enough, 
but not hopeless, for a situation that is worse, and that 
is hopeless. Our parts in the play had been those of in- 
jured innocence ; we were the victims : but now we are 
the heavy villains. 

“ I don’t know whether I make myself clear to you ! but 
it has all come upon me with a force and a light as great 
and as certain as if it were a revelation straight from God. 
Before, we were the victims ; now we are the heavy vil- 
lains ! The shot I fired turned the tables quite around. 
We had been in the right ; it put us in the wrong. The 
same shot that killed Leonticheffs body, destroyed our 
souls, destroyed the innocence of our lives, and placed any- 
thing approaching happiness or peace forever, forever be- 
yond our reach. Could we ever, do you think, be happy 
together, with that awful burden of guilt between us? 
Knowing the price at which we had purchased our liberty 
and our unity ? We could never be otherwise than utterly 
miserable ; we would come to blame each other, to lay the 
responsibility each at the other’s door, to hate each other. 
I preach ? No, no, it isn’t that. Only I know that I 
have committed a dreadful crime ; a crime which I can 
never undo, or atone for ; and I know that I can never for- 
get it, that I can never ease my mind or my memory or my 
conscience of the weight of it. Do not deceive yourself 
with the notion that I am simply upset and shocked, because 
I saw a man fall dead before me by my hand. That is bad 


346 


MEA CULPA. 


enougli, but if I had killed a man under circumstances 
which I could consider justifiable, I should be sure that a 
little time w r ould make that right. If I had killed a man 
when he was in the actual fact of attacking you, for in- 
stance, and I knew that I must kill him to save your life ! 
But I killed him in circumstances that were not justifiable ; 
I killed him because I wanted to get him out of the way ; 
I murdered him ; and I never can get over that. Don’t 
misunderstand me ; I am not sorry that he is dead, I am 
glad that he is dead ; his death was, so far as I can see, in 
every way a desirable event ; I am only sorry that I hilled 
Mm ; I think his death was desirable, but I think it was 
more desirable still that you and I should retain intact 
the innocence of our souls. It is this way : better that 
a thousand guilty men should live and prosper, than that 
one innocent man should become guilty. 

“ What am I going to do? Well, I will tell you in one 
word that I cannot bear it any longer. I have borne it 
unceasingly every hour of every day and night since it 
happened. I can’t describe what I have suffered, I can’t 
give you any idea of it. My life has simply been steeped 
in horror . . . horror when I lie down, and horror 

when I get up, horror, horror, horror ! I once saw a man 
in delirium tremens. I dare say the comparison is gro- 
tesque, but I feel just as he appeared to feel. Everything 
I see, every sound I hear, makes me start and tremble 
through and through with horror. I can’t bear it any 
longer, it is unbearable ; I don’t know any reason why I 
should try to bear it ; it is too much. As long as I live, 
it must be so, it must be the same ; as long as I remem- 
ber. Therefore, the shorter my life, the better for me. 
If I knew of some good cause in which I could lay down 
my life, I believe I should go and do it. But I am not 
aware of any good cause in the world at present wherein a 
man can serve, and yet die an instant death. Nowadays 


DESPERATE APPLIANCE. 


347 


you must live, if you would serve a cause. I cannot live 
any longer. Besides, I don’t set much store by causes, 
after all ; I am not a humanitarian. I cannot live any 
longer. I have stood this agony just as long as I can 
stand it. The first part of the curse of Cain I accept : I 
am cursed from the earth. But I will not accept the 
second part : I will not go on living, a vagabond and a 
wanderer, with a brand upon my forehead, and an un- 
ceasing fire in my heart. To-day will be the last day. I 
will finish this letter, and send it to you, and then I 
will . . . cela va sans dire. 

“ Don’t say that I am leaving you to bear it alone. I 
could not help you in any way if I remained. We could 
never be anything to each other — with that between us ! 
The way of the transgressor is hard ; we should have to 
tread it ; each would feel that it was the other’s fault 
which had brought us there. We could never be any- 
thing to each other. We were happy last night ? Yes, 
perhaps for a little while, with the short-lived ecstasy of 
passion. But afterward? For me it was worse than 
ever. 

“ Destiny seems to have been against us from the be- 
ginning. Good-by. I would wish to live if I could say I 
love you — if I could feel one spark of my old pure love 
for you, my innocent sweet love, in my heart. Good-by.” 


I have been very ill since then ; the doctors warn me 
that I may not have many months to live. I have written 
these pages in September and October, 1890. If I 
should die soon, they will be published. If I should 
disappoint the doctors, and live . . . ? 


THE END. 

























































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^BRAJiy 


CONGRESS 


mmm 


mam 













